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a General Mills, 9000 Plymouth Ave. N., Minneapolis, MN 55427
b USDA-ARS, 411 Borlaug Hall, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108
c Dep. of Plant Pathology, Univ. of Minnesota, 495 Borlaug Hall, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108
d Northwest Res. and Outreach Ctr., Univ. of Minnesota, Crookston, MN 56716
e Pioneer Hi-Bred Inc. Res. Ctr., 1740 SE 45th St., Willmar, MN 56201
f Dep. of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, Univ. of Minnesota, 411 Borlaug Hall, 1991 Upper Buford Circle, St. Paul, MN 55108
* Corresponding author (ander319{at}umn.edu)
| ABSTRACT |
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Abbreviations: DIS, disease index DON, deoxynivalenol FHB, Fusarium head blight INC, incidence VSK, visually scabby kernels
| INTRODUCTION |
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Disease development and evaluation of FHB is complex and is readily altered by environment (Parry et al., 1995; van Eeuwijk et al., 1995; Mesterházy, 1995, 1997; Groth et al., 1999). Using a single trait to characterize FHB resistance could be misleading because of the complexity of plant response to the disease. Many types and components of disease reaction have been described to help understand differences in disease response (Mesterházy, 1995; Parry et al., 1995; Dill-Macky, 2003). Often, the types and components relate to different aspects of FHB development. Single spikelet inoculations are used to evaluate disease spread in the spike (Bai and Shaner, 1996; Campbell and Lipps, 1998; Yang et al., 1999); however, their utilization is often limited by the labor required to inoculate and assess host reaction(s). Infection incidence and disease severity measure the frequency and degree of colonization of the spike, respectively, and are common measures of disease (Parry et al., 1995; Dill-Macky, 2003). Disease-affected grain is often quantified by percentage of visually scabby kernels (Jones and Mirocha, 1999) and deoxynivalenol (DON) content (Tacke and Casper, 1996; Mirocha et al., 1998). Yield reduction attributable to the disease is sometimes determined (Mesterházy, 1995), and ergosterol analysis has been used to quantify fungal biomass (Miller et al., 1985), but these measures of evaluation can be expensive.
Few studies have been reported that can help assess the efficient allocation of environments, replicates, and within plot subsampling for FHB evaluation. Campbell and Lipps (1998), working with winter wheat, used estimates of variance components to guide screening-nursery experimental design. They observed the largest reduction in genotype standard error through addition of screening environments. Mesterházy (1997) suggested that genotypes be evaluated for at least 2 to 3 yr (environments) before drawing conclusions regarding their relative reaction to this disease. The stability of a genotype's reaction across different FHB screening environments is also important. If susceptible genotypes are less stable in their reaction, as Mesterházy (1995) suggests, more testing will be required to characterize them properly. The objectives of this study were to characterize the stability of cultivars for their FHB reaction and to define an optimal resource allocation for FHB evaluation.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Fusarium Inoculation
St. PaulMacroconidial Inoculum
Thirty to 36 F. graminearum isolates were used as inoculum at St. Paul. Isolates were obtained from symptomatic spikes collected from commercial wheat fields at various Minnesota locations. Mung-bean agar was prepared and used as a substrate to grow F. graminearum cultures following Dill-Macky (2003). Macroconidia were rinsed from the culture surface with water, and aliquots at 8 x 105 macroconidia mL1 were prepared and stored frozen (20°C).
Inoculum (1 x 105 macroconidia mL1 and 2 mL L1 polyoxyethylenesorbitan monolaurate [Tween 20; ICI, Fair Lawn, NJ]) was applied to the spikes at the onset of anthesis with a CO2powered backpack sprayer equipped with a single TeeJet Flat fan nozzle no. ss80015 (Teejet Agricultural Spray Products, Wheaton, IL). Pressure was adjusted to 2.8 kg cm2, and plots were sprayed evenly at a rate of 30 mL m1 of row, approximately 7 x 106 macroconidia plot1. The sprayer allowed plots to be inoculated separately. Plants were inoculated for the first time when anthers were beginning to extrude from spikes. A second inoculation was applied to each plot three or four days after the first inoculation. Each plot was inoculated three times in 1999 and twice in 2000, 2001, and 2002. The nursery was misted eight times during a daily cycle with an automatic irrigation system. Misting was initiated with the first inoculation and continued for 26 d in 1999 and 18 d in 2000, 2001, and 2002. In 1999, plots were misted for 20 min every 3 h, except in the afternoon and evening when misting duration was increased to 30 min. This provided approximately 12.7 mm d1 of water. Misting-cycle duration was reduced to 16 min in 2000, 2001, and 2002, providing approximately 7.6 mm d1 of water.
CrookstonColonized-Grain Inoculum
At Crookston, inoculum was prepared from 12 isolates obtained from infected wheat at various locations in the Red River Valley in 1994. Maize (Zea mays L.) kernels were autoclaved and colonized by F. graminearum following Dill-Macky (2003). Grain inoculum that was spread at the jointing stage was prepared up to 6 wk in advance, dried, and stored at room temperature. Freshly colonized grain (that would develop mature perithecia in approximately 14 d) was used for subsequent inoculations.
The nursery was inoculated by uniformly spreading Fusariumcolonized kernels on the soil surface at 100 kg ha1 27 d before mean heading date in 1999, and 24 d prior in 2000, 2001, and 2002. The interval between rainfalls was seldom more than 2 d during the 2 wk after inoculation in 1999, so initiation of mist irrigation was delayed until 15 d post-inoculation. At that time, the nursery was misted from 2100 to 0700 h for 10 min of every 80-min cycle (about 6.3 mm d1 of water). Misting was stopped 27 d post-heading. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, mist irrigation was started 4 d after inoculation. The nursery was initially misted from 1700 to 1000 h for 10 min of every 90-min cycle. Misting was reduced to 2400 to 0800 h beginning 3 d post-heading, and continued for another 20 d. The two schedules provided approximately 9.4 and 4.5 mm d1 of water, respectively.
Data Collection
Disease Evaluation
Heading date in all environments was recorded as the first date when one half or more of primary spikes had emerged. Visual disease scores (05) representative of the level of infection were assigned to dominant spikes (primary tillers) from 20 arbitrarily selected plants per plot. Spikes within 0.3 m of the row's end were not scored. In general, a spikelet was considered infected if any glumes, lemmas, and/or palea were visibly necrotic. The scores were assigned as follows: 0no symptomatic spikelets, 1one symptomatic spikelet, 2two symptomatic spikelets or occasionally three if some spikelets contained florets that appeared unaffected by disease, 3three to eight symptomatic spikelets, 4more than 50% of the spike symptomatic and at least one unaffected spikelet, and 5all spikelets symptomatic.
Spikes generally had 15 to 17 spikelets; accordingly, these scores represented disease symptoms in approximately 0, 6, 16, 35, 65, and 100% of the spike, respectively. The scores were used to calculate the following two variables for each plot: disease incidence (INC) recorded as percentage of the frequency of symptomatic spikes (scores 15) and disease index (DIS)mean score of all spikes (scores 05). Spikes were assessed at late grain-filling, when healthy spikes were still green and not senescent. At St. Paul, the scoring date was adjusted relative to inoculation date; plots were scored 19 d after their respective first inoculation dates. Two scoring dates were used for 1999 at Crookston; the earlier heading plots were scored 6 d before later heading plots, averaging 28 d after heading for each group. All plots were scored 23 d after the nursery's mean heading date at Crookston in 2000, 2001, and 2002.
Visually Scabby KernelS
Post-harvest examination of grain samples following combine-harvesting (19992001) or hand-harvesting of a 30-spike sample (2002) was done for each plot. Because FHB reduces kernel weight and density (Wiersma et al., 1996), during mechanical threshing the air flow over the grain sieves was reduced until essentially no FHB-affected kernels were being lost from the grain sample. The threshed samples often contained substantial nongrain material that was removed by various mechanical and manual techniques. Percentage of visually scabby kernels (VSK) was assessed following Jones and Mirocha (1999).
Deoxynivalenol Analysis
Samples from the three replications of each cultivar were bulked following VSK determination and ground for 2 min with a Stein Laboratories Mill (model M-2, Stein Laboratories Inc., Atchison, KS). Sample extraction and clean-up procedures were based on the methods of Tacke and Casper (1996) and Mirocha et al. (1998) with some modifications. A 4-g sample was extracted with 16 mL acetonitrile/water (84:16 v:v) extraction buffer. The sample was placed on a rotary shaker for 1 h; 4 mL of extract was passed through a column packed with C18 and aluminum oxide. One milliliter of filtrate was evaporated to dryness under nitrogen and derivatized by the silylating reagent (TMSI/TMCS 100:1, Pierce Chemical Co., Rockford, IL) for GC/MS analysis (Shimadzu GCMS-QP2010, Shimadzu Corporation, Kyoto, Japan). Selected ion monitoring (SIM) was used for GC/MS analysis with fragment ion (m/z value) of 235.10 as target ion and 259.10 and 422.10 as reference ions. A set of 10 standards ranging from 25 ng g1 to 16 µg g1 was interspersed among the samples being analyzed. A 6-point standard curve was used to cover 25 ng g1 to 1 µg g1, and the 10-point curve was used to calculate higher concentrations.
Data Analyses
Cultivars and locations were considered fixed effects. Years, replicates, and plants within plots were assumed to be random effects. Analyses of variance to compare cultivar means were conducted on INC, DIS, VSK, and DON. For DON laboratory analysis, we bulked the three replications for each environment; therefore, the analyses of variance had the sources of variation as cultivars, environments, and cultivar x environment interaction; the latter was the error term. We consider environments random effects as they arise from the combinations of locations by years, which are fixed and random, respectively. At each environment, Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated on an entry mean basis to assess the relationships among heading date, INC, DIS, VSK, and DON. Spearman rank correlation coefficients between the cultivars' yearly ranks and Kendall's coefficient of concordance (W) were estimated, according to Hühn (1996), to evaluate the similarity of cultivar rankings for each FHB parameter in different environments. Kendall's coefficient of concordance is defined as the ratio of the observed variance of the rank sums and the maximum variance of the ranks. It is equivalent to the mean of all Spearman rank correlation coefficients for all possible pair-wise comparisons of the rankings of the genotypes in different environments (Hühn, 1996). In each environment, ranking of the 14 cultivars was conducted per replication. For each parameter, Rank 1 was assigned to the cultivar with the lowest value and rank 14 assigned to the cultivar with the highest value. Estimates of pooled-error mean squares, within-plot variances, and plot-to-plot variances were obtained for DIS data following analyses of variance models described by Fehr (1987). Homogeneity of error variances was tested according to Bartlett (Steele and Torrie, 1980). Analyses of data were conducted using PROC CORR, PROC GLM, and PROC MIXED (SAS 8.1, SAS Institute Inc, 2001).
Stability Analyses
The stability of cultivars for the two FHB parameters, DIS and VSK, was assessed by considering locationyear combinations as eight environments (4 yr x 2 locations). Analyses of variance were conducted to obtain the effects of cultivars, environments, and the cultivar x environment interaction (C x E). The environmental sum of squares was partitioned into linear regression and residual and the C x E interaction sum of squares was partitioned into heterogeneity of regressions and residual according to Freeman and Perkins (1971). For each cultivar, four stability parameters were estimated: regression coefficient bi (Finlay and Wilkinson, 1963), deviation from regression parameter
2i (Eberhart and Russell, 1966), and stability variances
2i and s2i (Shukla, 1972). The regression coefficient bi and
2i were determined from the regression of each cultivar's within-environment means on an environmental index (Eberhart and Russell, 1966). These estimates are defined from the model:
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ij is the deviation from regression of the ith cultivar in the jth environment. Estimates of Shukla (1972) stability variances
2i for
2i and
2i for s2i were obtained as from the models described below.
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2,
i is the estimated regression coefficient for the ith genotype, the covariate zj (the environmental index) is the deviation of the jth environment from the overall mean, t is the number of genotypes, and s is the number of environments. Estimates of stability variances were obtained by a computer program provided at no charge by Kang (1989).
Predicted Genotype Standard Error and Least Significant Difference (LSD)
Genotype standard errors and least significant difference calculations for various combinations of the number of spikes plot1 evaluated, replications, and environments were calculated for the DIS parameter because this is the mostly widely used FHB parameter assessed among wheat breeders. Standard errors were calculated as
1/2, where r = number of replications, e = number of environments, s2
, the plot error variance = s2w/n + s2b, where s2w is the within-plot variance with n spikes per plot evaluated, and s2b is between plot variance, and s2CE is the estimated cultivar x environment variance obtained by the model described by Freeman and Perkins (1971). Using this equation, s2
is expressed relative to plot mean. Predicted LSD0.05 for various levels of subsampling and replication, and various numbers of environments were calculated as LSD = t
x
1/2 where df = degrees of freedom for pooled error, and other terms as described above (Fehr, 1987).
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSION |
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0.05) among cultivars were found for all FHB parameters measured, indicating that the cultivars represented a wide range of reaction to FHB.
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Interestingly, cultivar rankings from the Crookston location (colonized-grain inoculum) were more similar across years than were those from the St. Paul location (macroconidial-spray inoculum), on the basis of the year-to-year Spearman correlations and on Kendall's coefficient of concordance in Table 3. This was not expected because of the greater control over inoculum application provided by the macroconidial spray. The factors responsible for the lower similarity of the cultivar rankings at the St. Paul location are not known but likely include yearly variation in temperature and possibly in precipitation during the period from inoculation to harvest. Variation in precipitation is less likely because of the mist irrigation applied.
Cultivar Stability
Analyses of variance of cultivars across environments (locations x years) for DIS and VSK revealed significant differences among cultivars, environments, and their interactions (C x E) (Table 4). Significant differences among environments indicate that the cultivars were exposed to and evaluated at significantly different disease levels. The linear regression of cultivars on the environmental index was significant and accounted for >95% and 99% of the environmental variance for DIS and VSK, respectively. Heterogeneity of regression was also significant and accounted for about 20 and 43% of the C x E interaction variance for DIS and VSK, respectively. Significant heterogeneity of regression indicates statistical differences in the slopes of the regression lines. The residual of the C x E was still significant and indicates that some other factor(s) besides differences in the slopes of the regression lines, such as deviation from regressions are contributing to the C x E.
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2i considers a cultivar stable if the residual mean square from Finlay and Wilkinson's (1963) regression model is not significantly different from zero and it represents Type 3 stability. Shukla's (1972)
2i and s2i also represent Type 2 stability but are differentiated from Finlay and Wilkinson's bi because they
are derived from the C x E sums of squares instead of the regression coefficient (bi).
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2i,
2i, and s2i. Shukla's
2i represents the portion of the total C x E variance that is attributable to the ith genotype. On the other hand, s2i represents the portion of only the residual component of the C x E variance that is attributable to the ith genotype. Shukla's s2i is an extension of the model to calculate
2i and takes into account the covariate zj (environmental index). If some genotypes show low stability on the basis of
2i and are judged as stable after taking the covariate into account (as expressed by the significance of s2i), it may be inferred that the instability was introduced by the linear effect of the covariate (Shukla, 1972). Seven cultivars in our study show low stability on the basis of
2i and all became stable after taking the covariate into account. Our results show that BacUp would be a good resistant check because of its high level of resistance and high stability (Table 5). Norm and Wheaton had high mean values for DIS and VSK and low bi, indicating that they are stable susceptible checks. Three lines (Forge, Roblin, and Verde) had deviations from regression
values significantly greater than zero for DIS, indicating low stability; however, they were stable on the basis of the other stability parameters. For both DIS and VSK (Table 5), and for INC (data not shown), results from stability analyses revealed stability for FHB response in resistant, intermediate, and susceptible cultivars. Our results differ from those of Mesterházy (1995) who concluded that stability for disease reaction was correlated with resistance level, with the most resistant cultivars being most stable and the most susceptible cultivars being less stable. Although different, our results do not necessarily contradict those of Mesterházy (1995). Mesterházy (1995) included factors that led to cases of symptomless susceptible cultivars, e.g., when conditions were less favorable for disease development and when the fungal isolate tested was a weak pathogen. Therefore, the susceptible cultivars showed few visible symptoms of disease in some environments but suffered devastating damage in others. Our tests were done under different environmental conditions but all with disease levels sufficient to differentiate resistant from susceptible cultivars.
Resource Allocation for FHB Screening
An approach to decide on practical limits for subsampling, number of replications, and number of environments is to estimate genotype standard error (SE) under varied numbers of these parameters. Standard error =
1/2, where r = number of replications, e = number of environments, and other terms as described previously. Resources should be allocated such that for any given effort (resources used), the genotype standard error is minimized. Lower genotype standard errors maximize the probability of finding significant differences among genotypes and give greater confidence that a genotype's FHB reaction has been correctly characterized. Increasing the number of environments from one to two or one to three at any given level of replication or spikes per plot analyzed resulted in the greatest reduction in genotype standard error for DIS compared with increasing either the number of replications or spikes per plot (Table 6). Campbell and Lipps (1998) compared different sources of variability on FHB response and found that the magnitude of the within-plot variance was so high that it impeded detection of significant differences among lines tested. They used estimates of standard errors to make recommendations regarding resource allocation. They obtained the largest reduction in SE by increasing the number of environments, then replications. Compared to the cost of evaluating one additional spike per plot, an additional replication or environment cost 10 or 50 times more, respectively (Campbell and Lipps, 1998), and total costs were optimized if eight spikes per plot were evaluated in four replications per environment. The authors made no specific recommendation regarding the appropriate number of environments to assess for allocation of resources when screening for FHB reaction although they noted that three or more environments required a total cost per genotype that exceeded their resources (Campbell and Lipps, 1998).
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| CONCLUSIONS |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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Received for publication October 5, 2004.
| REFERENCES |
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