Wheat sharp eyespot (SES), caused by the soilborne pathogen Rhizoctonia cerealis Van der Hoeven (teleomorph: Ceratobasidium cereale), is a common stem disease of wheat globally. The disease caused a severe and extensive epidemic throughout the Willamette Valley of Oregon in 2014 and has remained one of the most important wheat diseases in this region. However, little was known about the genetics of host resistance to this disease. A recombinant inbred line (RIL) population with 257 lines developed from a cross of Einstein × Tubbs was used to study SES resistance of wheat. The phenotyping was conducted at two locations and in 3 years. Genotyping by sequencing was done by using Illumina HiSeq 3000. Low broad-sense heritability across four environments was obtained. The results of analysis of variance demonstrated that disease severity was significantly different among RILs for the data combined over environments and for one of the individual environments. Four SES resistance quantitative trait loci (QTL) were detected, including QSES-1A, QSES-2B, QSES-6A, and QSES-7A, and explained 5.9, 5.9, 8.8, and 8.3%, respectively, of the phenotypic variance. All four QTL overlapped or are in close proximity with one or more plant defense genes, and could lay the foundation for marker-assisted breeding.
Keywords: QTL; Rhizoctonia cerealis; resistance QTL; wheat; wheat sharp eyespot.