Inheritance of resistance to root-lesion nematode (Pratylenchus thornei) in wheat landraces and cultivars from the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region

Abstract

The root-lesion nematode Pratylenchus thornei causes substantial loss to bread wheat production in the northern grain region of Australia and other parts of the world. West Asia and North Africa (WANA) wheat accessions with partial resistance to P. thornei were analysed for mode of inheritance in a half-diallel crossing design of F1 hybrids (10 parents) and F2 populations (7 parents). General combining ability was more important than specific combining ability as indicated by components of variance ratios of 0.93 and 0.95 in diallel ANOVA of the F1 and F2 generations, respectively. General combining ability values of the ‘resistant’ parents were predictive of the mean nematode numbers of their progeny in crosses with the susceptible Australian cv. Janz at the F1 (R2 = 0.86, P < 0.001, 8 crosses), F2 (R2 = 0.83, P < 0.001, 9 populations) and F∞ (R2 = 0.71, P < 0.05, 5 doubled-haploid populations). The F2 and F∞ populations showed relatively continuous distributions. Heritability was 0.68 for F2 populations in the half-diallel of resistant parents and 0.82–0.92 for 5 ‘resistant’ parent/Janz doubled-haploid populations (narrow-sense heritability on a line mean basis). The results indicate polygenic inheritance of P. thornei resistance with a minimum of from 2 to 6 genes involved in individual F∞ populations of 5 resistant parents crossed with Janz. Morocco 426 and Iraq 43 appear to be the best of the parents tested for breeding for resistance to P. thornei. None of the P. thornei-resistant WANA accessions was resistant to Pratylenchus neglectus.