U of M Scientist Initiates Research Collaboration with Russia’s Vavilov Institute

As part of an ongoing investigation to identify resistance to FHB in barley, U of M cereal pathologist Brian Steffenson has initiated a cooperative research project with the N. I. Vavilov All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Plant Industry (in Russian, the Vsesoyuzny Institut Rastenievodstva or VIR), which houses one of the largest gene banks of economic plants in the world.

VIR is named after geneticist N.I. Vavilov, who formulated important theories on plant genetic resources and traveled the world collecting samples of economically important crops and their wild ancestors. 

Steffenson says the institute has endured many hardships, including the 900-day siege of Leningrad by the Germans during World War II, in which seven staff members died of starvation protecting the valuable germplasm; and more recently the shortage of adequate cold rooms to preserve germplasm.

The U of M plant pathologist visited St. Petersburg in July 2002 and September 2003 to establish the collaboration with VIR scientists. Steffenson’s joint project is with Igor Loskutov, the institute’s rye, barley, and oat curator. The institute’s barley collection contains over 20,000 accessions, comprising 24 different Hordeum species. 

Steffenson will test 500 accessions of cultivated and wild barley from VIR for resistance to FHB in 2004. “The barley collection at VIR is very diverse, and contains accessions from regions not represented in the USDA National Small Grains Collection,” he says. “FHB is a serious disease problem on barley and wheat in Russia, especially in the Far East and the Krasnodar region.  The identification of resistant barleys from these evaluations will help breeding efforts in both countries.”

As part of Steffenson’s federally-funded research, the U of M is screening 800-1,000 barley accessions each year. Accessions exhibiting the highest level of resistance from the initial field evaluations in China (Hangzhou) and the Midwest (Crookston and St. Paul) are screened for resistance to initial infection, resistance to spread, pathogen growth, and DON accumulation. 

Ultimately, Steffenson’s goal is to identify barley lines that possess the highest level of FHB resistance. Pyramiding the resistance genes from these sources will facilitate the development of malting cultivars that yield well and accumulate low DON levels under FHB disease pressure, he says.

U of M cereal pathologist Brian Steffenson says his ultimate goal in this project is to identify barley lines that process the highest level of FHB resistance.