Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The annual meeting of WCC 97 was held in Pullman, WA June 28-29, 2004 at the Holiday Inn Express Hotel in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Western Wheat Workers. The business meeting began with a talk by Dr. Jorge Dubcovsky on "Regulation of wheat and barley flowering time by vernalization" and another by Dr. Tim Paulitz on "Epidemiology of soil borne pathogens in direct-seed cereals: New insights from GPS and spatial analysis." State reports followed with separate business meetings for each group in the afternoon and tours of the WSU and ARS facilities on the Washington State University campus. A barbeque dinner was held at a local park in the evening. A field trip to research plots at the Spillman Agronomy Farm, the Palouse Conservation Field Station, and the McGregor Research Farm was held on June 29. Research by both public and private industry (AgriPro Wheat, Western Plant Breeders, and MacGregor) scientists was highlighted during the tour. State reports were given by 7 states. In addition, representatives of private companies provided updated information on their research directions and priorities. Overall the level of interaction among participants was excellent with discussions of several important diseases including Cephalosporium stripe, eyespot, stripe rust, Fusarium root and crown rot, Rhizoctonia root rot, and physiological leaf spot. In addition, herbicide-resistant wheat varieties and prospects for GMO wheat were discussed. There were 80 participants in the meeting, with 8 from private industry and the balance from the public sector. Five of the 14 WCC-97 member states were represented, which was down from 2002. Retirements and budget reductions have reduced the number of individuals working on small grain in the western U.S. Letters of invitation were sent to scientists in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Idaho to encourage their participation and state representation in WCC-97. Meeting participants decided to meet in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada in 2005, with the date to be determined by local host Denis Gaudet. Following discussion of the 2006 meeting location, WCC-97 members decided to accept an invitation to hold a joint meeting with NCR-184 in Fargo, ND. Tim Murray will follow-up to confirm our participation. This group continues to fulfill the objectives of communicating and coordinating research activities among its members. There is continued strong participation and support for its activities by members and the private sector alike. Two members were identified to develop a revised petition for submission by January 15 for consideration at the winter meeting of the Western Directors. Other specific accomplishments of committee members during the year include: Winter wheat cultivar AGSECO 7853 was found to have a temperature sensitive gene for resistance to Stagonospora leaf blotch. Such a gene may be of importance to breeders desiring to increase the adult-plant resistance of wheat cultivars to this disease. Resistance to take-all root rot that is evident in some alien grass species (Haynaldia villosa, Hordeum chiliense and H. vulgare) was not expressed in wheat when chromosomes or segments of chromosomes of the alien donor species were incorporated into a wheat cultivar. Resistance from these sources will probably not be easily transferred to wheat. Several wheat cultivars released by Kansas State University have effective levels of resistance to Stagonospora leaf blotch that has been effective in the field for several years. Resistance in two of these cultivars appears to be controlled by different single dominant genes. Such resistance should be easily manipulated in breeding programs. According to models developed for the amount of yield loss from take-all root rot as a function of the distance of the inoculum from a newly-seeded plant, drilling into no-till wheat residue between the rows, as opposed to across the rows, of old crowns should reduced the disease. This could be accomplished with precision planting equipment and would place the seed the maximum distance from the take-all inoculum (infected wheat crowns from the previous year), minimizing take-all. Several foliar fungicides were evaluated for effectiveness against the wheat tan spot disease. This is the latest in an ongoing effort to evaluate experimental chemicals for disease-control efficacy and optimize timing for commercial fungicides. The reactions of common commercial winter wheat cultivars to various wheat diseases prevalent in Kansas were disseminated to wheat producers to help them in selecting cultivars that are appropriate for their area and risk level. These data are disseminated to wheat producers and used by wheat breeders and geneticists to make selections for improved resistance. The same publication is also available on the Web.

Extension & Technical publications Bockus, W.W. 2004. Evaluation of foliar fungicides for control of tan spot of winter wheat, 2003. Fung. & Nema. Tests. Vol. 59 (published online at www.apsnet.org/online/FNtests/). Bockus, W.W., and Davis, M.A. 2004. Reaction of selected winter wheat cultivars to tan spot and leaf rust, 2003. Biol. Cult. Tests Control Plant Dis. Vol. 19 (published online at www.apsnet.org/online/BCtests/). Bockus, W.W., Fritz, A.K., and Martin, T.J. 2004. Reaction of the 2003 Kansas Intrastate Nursery to Fusarium head blight, 2003. Biol. Cult. Tests Control Plant Dis. Vol. 19 (published online at www.apsnet.org/online/BCtests/). Chen, X.M., and Wood, D.A. 2003. Control of stripe rust of spring barley with foliar fungicides, 2002. F&N Tests. 58:CF003. Chen, X.M., and Wood, D.A. 2003. Control of stripe rust of spring wheat with foliar fungicides, 2002. F&N Tests. 58:CF004. Cox, C., Bockus, W., Garrett, K., Cox, T.S., and Peters, T. 2004. Reaction of selected perennial grass accessions to barley yellow dwarf, 2003. Biol. Cult. Tests Control Plant Dis. Vol. 19 (published online at www.apsnet.org/online/BCtests/). Davis, M.A., Bockus, W.W. and Brown-Guedira, G.L. 2004. Reaction of selected winter wheat cultivars to Fusarium head blight, 2003. Biol. Cult. Tests Control Plant Dis. Vol. 19 (published online at www.apsnet.org/online/BCtests/). Kim, Y., Friebe, B., and Bockus, W.W. 2003. Resistance to Take-all Root Rot is not Expressed in WheatAlien Chromosome Addition and Substitution Lines. Plant Health Progress (published online at http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/php/2003.asp). Peever, T. L. and T. D. Murray. 2003. First report of tan spot of wheat in the U.S. Pacific Northwest caused by Pyrenophora tritici-repentis. Plant Disease 87:203 (published on-line as D-2002-1202-02N). Roozeboom, K., Bockus, W.W., Fritz, A., Evans, P., Long, J., Martin, T.J., Schlegel, A., Witt, M., Claassen, M., Gordon, W.B., Heer, W., Janssen, K., Martin, V., Parker, E., Seabourn, B., Lamond, R., and Bennett, R. 2003. 2003 Kansas Performance Tests with Winter Wheat Varieties. Kansas AES Report of Progress 912. 29 pp. Wheat Disease Profiles I. University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension EC03-1884-S. Wheat Disease Profiles II. University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension EC03-1889-S. Fungicide Options for Managing Foliar Diseases on Wheat. University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension NF00-410 (Revised July 2004). Management Program for Rust Diseases of Wheat. University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension. NF00-559 (Revised July 2004). Management Program for Foliar Leaf Spot Diseases of Wheat. University of Nebraska Cooperative Extension. NF00-560 (Revised July 2004). Research publications Anand, A., T. Zhou, H.N. Trick, B.S. Gill, W.W. Bockus, and S.Muthukrishnan. 2003. Greenhouse and field testing of transgenic wheat plants stably expressing genes for thaumatin-protein, chitinase and glucanase against Fusarium graminearum. J. of Experimental Bot. 54:1101-1111. Castro, A., X.M. Chen, P.M. Hayes, and M. Johnston. 2003. Pyramiding quantitative trait locus (QTL) alleles determining resistance to barley stripe rust: effects on resistance at the seedling stage. Crop Sci. 43:651-659. Castro, A.J., X. M. Chen, P.M. Hayes, S.J. Knapp, R.F. Line, T. Toojinda, and H. Vivar. 2002. Coincident QTL which determine seedling and adult plant resistance to stripe rust in barley. Crop Sci. 42:1701-1708. Chen, X.M., and R.F. Line. 2003. Identification of genes for resistance to Puccinia striiformis f. sp. hordei in 18 barley genotypes. Euphytica 129:127-146. Chen, X.M., M.A. Soria, G.P. Yan, J. Sun, and J. Dubcovsky. 2003. Development of sequence tagged site and cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence markers for wheat stripe rust resistance gene Yr5. Crop Sci. 43:2058-2064. Chen, X.M., M.K. Moore, E.A. Milus, D.L. Long, R.F. Line, D. Marshall, and L. Jackson. 2002. Wheat stripe rust epidemics and races of Puccinia striiformis f. sp. tritici in the United States in 2000. Plant Dis. 86:39-46. Kim, Y. and W.W. Bockus. 2003. Temperature-sensitive reaction of winter wheat cultivar AGSECO 7853 to Stagonospora nodorum. Plant Dis. 87:1125-1128. Kim, Y.K., G. Brown-Guedira, T.S. Cox, and W.W. Bockus. 2004. Inheritance of resistance to Stagonospora nodorum leaf blotch in Kansas winter wheat cultivars. Plant Disease 88:530-536. Garrett, K.S., M. Kabbage, and W.W. Bockus. 2004. Managing for fine-scale differences in inoculum load: Seeding patterns to minimize wheat yield loss to take-all. Precision Agriculture 5:291-301. Li, H.J., M. Arterburn, S.S. Jones, and T.D. Murray. 2004. A new source of resistance to Tapesia yallundae associated with a homoeologous group 4 chromosome in Thinopyrum ponticum. Phytopathology 94:932-937. Yan, G.P., X.M. Chen, R.F. Line, and C.R. Wellings. 2003. Resistance gene analog polymorphism markers co-segregating with the Yr5 gene for resistance to wheat stripe rust. Theor. Appl. Genet. 106:636-643.