Contribution of Serbian and Spanish landraces to disease resistance in barley

Leaf rust and powdery mildew, caused by the fungi Puccinia hordei and Blumeria graminis, respectively, are important diseases of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) worldwide. The appearance of new virulent races of these pathogens and the depletion of the genepool of cultivated barley for major resistance genes demands a continuous supply of new sources of disease resistance. Landrace collections from Serbia and Spain were surveyed for novel resistances to P. hordei and B. graminis. Screening of spring barley landraces from Serbia led to the identification of the accession ‗MBR1012‘ carrying resistance to the most wide spread virulent leaf rust pathotypes in Europe. A novel resistance gene was mapped in the telomeric region of chromosome 1HS. Similarly, two major quantitative trait loci (QTL) for resistance to powdery mildew were identified on the short and long arms of chromosome 7H in the Spanish landrace SBCC097. Current works are focused on increasing the marker density within the target intervals by use of syntenic approaches and comparative analysis with the barley genome zipper. Our results revealed the presence of novel fungal resistance genes and QTL in two landrace collections and in parallel, provide the tools for their efficient deployment in barley breeding programs.