D3090: Aegilops tauschii resistance to wheat stem sawfly

Crop wild relatives are valuable sources of genetic variability, with the potential to confer pest and disease resistance to essential crops through the use of introgression. Aegilops tauschii, commonly known as goatgrass, is a wild relative of wheat that has been used to develop resistances to various pathogens and arthropod pests such as hessian fly. Despite the many applications it has been used for, however, there is a lack of information regarding Ae. Tauschii’s effectiveness on the common wheat pest, wheat stem sawfly (Cephus cinctus Norton). We conducted a no-choice greenhouse experiment in which 76 Ae. tauschii accessions were screened for resistance to sawfly from a selection of 242 lines representing global diversity of the species. Two sawfly females were added to individually caged plants, in which half of the infested plants were destructively sampled shortly after oviposition to assess egg densities as an indicator of non-preference. The remaining plants were sampled after 6 weeks to assess larval fate as an indicator of potential antibiosis. Preliminary results show that a majority of Aegilops plants were infested with eggs, with evidence of stem cutting and lodging by larval insects. As Ae. tauschii is fully sequenced, once plants are phenotyped any genes associated with resistance to sawfly can be identified and used in future wheat breeding programs.