Journal of Agronomy and Field Innovations

Leaf rust (Puccinia triticina Erikss.), a serious disease of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), is the cause of huge losses in susceptible varieties. Marker-assisted selection (MAS) is a highly effective biotechnological tool that significantly speeds up the creation of varieties with a lasting disease resistance, enabling the identification of numerous resistance genes. The study aimed to discover how effective MAS will be in introgressing and combining two of the most important genes of resistance to leaf rust: Lr24 and Lr46. A segregating population of 287 plants created from crossing of susceptible elite breeding lines with the donors of Lr24 and Lr46 was subjected to phenotypic evaluation and marker analysis. Lots of field trials were organized in three different agro-climatic zones to evaluate the degree of infection. Genetic markers specific for the genes Lr24 and Lr46 were used to genotype the breeding material and discover the plants with either separate genes of resistance or two genes together. The study found that MAS dramatically improved the efficiency of selection, leading to 78% of selected plants possessing the disease-resistance genes compared to only 32% of plants selected through conventional means. The pyramid lines containing the Lr24 and Lr46 genes showed improvements in their resistance to leaf rust across all the tests, showing infection scores of between 0.5 and 1.5 on the 0-9 scale, while showing good performance in farming identical to the susceptible varieties. The resistant lines selected showed similar yields with overall performance of 4.8 tons per hectare with no losses in yields for the cultivation of resistance genes. The results of this study show that MAS can provide important advantages over conventional breeding in developing multi-gene resistance in wheat and offers a new platform for producing efficient use of disease-resistant varieties in further research of wheat breeding.