By Jamie Martin
A new research study has shown that wheat can gain strong protection against Fusarium Head Blight by using genes from wild grass species. Fusarium Head Blight is one of the most damaging fungal diseases in wheat and poses risks to crop yields, food quality, and livestock health.
The disease causes grain loss and produces toxins that can contaminate food, often forcing farmers to destroy infected harvests. Finding resistant wheat varieties is considered the most effective long‑term solution.
Researchers turned to Elymus repens, also called couch grass, which is closely related to wheat. This relationship allowed scientists to breed the two plants together and move disease‑resistant traits into wheat.
The research was conducted by scientists at Sichuan Agricultural University in Chengdu, China, through its State Key Laboratory of Crop Gene Exploration and Utilization, with key contributions from Fei Wang, identified a new resistance region in the wild grass. This region was successfully transferred into wheat plants, creating hybrids with much lower disease levels.
“Both research and breeding practice have shown that developing and deploying resistant wheat cultivars is the fundamental solution to FHB,” said Fei Wang. “However, current efforts are limited by a scarcity of major resistance sources, narrow genetic backgrounds and inefficient use of resistance genes.”
Tests showed hybrid wheat reduced disease symptoms by nearly 70 percent in greenhouse trials and by around 60 percent in field conditions. These strong results suggest the hybrid could perform well on farms.
The resistance comes from a newly named genetic locus, Fhb.Er‑1StL, which is different from known resistance genes. This makes it a valuable new resource for breeding stronger wheat varieties.
This discovery adds to earlier findings by the same research team, who have already identified other resistance traits from the same wild grass species.
“We believe this work is of practical importance for accelerating the breeding of resistant, high-yielding wheat varieties and breaking the bottleneck in FHB resistance breeding,” said Dr Yinghui Li.
The research was carried out by scientists from Sichuan Agricultural University and its crop genetics laboratories in China, along with international partners. The findings were published in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
Experts believe this work can help overcome challenges in wheat disease resistance and support the development of healthier, high‑yield crops needed for global food security.
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