Fire Blight Resistance in Wild Accessions of Malus sieversii

Using Functional Genomics to Identify Molecular Markers for Fire Blight Resistance (Erwinia Amylovora) in Apple (Malus)

Fire blight, caused by Erwinia amylovora (Ea), is a destructive disease of Malus (apple), Pyrus (pear) and some woody ornamentals in the rose family (Rosaceae). The goal of this project is to use a functional genomics approach to develop tools to breed fire blight resistant apples. Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) and cDNA-AFLP analysis were used to identify 650 expressed sequence ta...

Rice Sheath Blight Disease Resistance Identified in Oryza spp. Accessions

Inheritance of fire blight resistance in Asian Pyrus species

Since several Asian pear species are considered to be potential source of fire blight resistance, we crossed ‘Doyenné du Comice’, the susceptible European cultivar, with four Asian pear species. The aim of the study was to establish the level of resistance of each genotype and the mode of transmission of fire blight resistance to each F1 full-sib progeny. The best sources of resistance were P. ...

Novel Sources of Witchweed (Striga) Resistance from Wild Sorghum Accessions

Sorghum is a major food staple in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but its production is constrained by the parasitic plant Striga that attaches to the roots of many cereals crops and causes severe stunting and loss of yield. Away from cultivated farmland, wild sorghum accessions grow as weedy plants and have shown remarkable immunity to Striga. We sought to determine the extent of the resistance to S...

Identification of MsHsp20 Gene Family in Malus sieversii and Functional Characterization of MsHsp16.9 in Heat Tolerance

Heat shock proteins (Hsps) are common molecular chaperones present in all plants that accumulate in response to abiotic stress. Small heat shock proteins (sHsps) play important roles in alleviating diverse abiotic stresses, especially heat stress. However, very little is known about the MsHsp20 gene family in the wild apple Malus sieversii, a precious germplasm resource with excellent resistanc...