Pyramiding wheat pre-harvest sprouting resistance genes in triticale breeding.

Pre -harvest sprouting (PHS) is an important problem in cereal production reducing yield and grain quality. After decades of improvement, triticale remains particularly susceptible to PHS but no resistance genes or QTLs were identified so far in this species. As wheat shares the A and B genomes with triticale, wheat PHS resistance genes can be introgressed into triticale genome by recombination after interspecific crosses. In this project, three PHS resistance genes have been transferred from wheat to triticale by marker-assisted interspecific crosses, followed by four backcrosses. The gene from the 3AS chromosome of cultivar Zenkoujikomugi (Zen) and the and , respectively located on the 4AL and 5BL chromosomes derived both from cultivar Aus1408, were pyramided in the triticale cultivar Cosinus. Only the gene increases consistently the PHS resistance in triticale. The lack of efficacy of the other two genes, especially , could be the result of an imperfect linkage between the marker and the gene of interest. The introduction of PHS resistance genes did not alter agronomic nor disease resistance performances of triticale. This approach leads to two new, agronomically performant and PHS-resistant triticale cultivars. Today, two breeding triticale lines are ready to enter the official registration process.