Project Number: 3602-21220-010-04
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Aug 22, 2006
End Date: Sep 30, 2010

Objective:
Identify genes that contribute to resistance to Fusarium head blight. These genes will be used (in other work) to engineer resistance to FHB, or will be targets for breeder to use in generating varieties with improved FHB resistance.

Approach:
Virus-induced gene silencing will be employed to suppress the expression of wheat genes that are candidates for encoding components of pathway providing resistance to FHB. If suppression of a candidate gene results in conversion of resistance to susceptibility, we will have obtained strong evidence that the gene functions in the FHB resistance pathway.