Date
13 October 2021
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Visual Stories   
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Pests and Diseases
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Research identifies new gene to help tackle canola disease

An international team has identified a new gene, designated Rlm13 that could lead to the development of new canola varieties with resistance to blackleg disease.


An international team, led by NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) Senior Principal Research Scientist Dr Harsh Raman has identified a new gene, designated Rlm13 that could lead to the development of new canola varieties with resistance to blackleg disease.

The ground-breaking research has investment from the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), the Chinese Academy of Agriculture Sciences and the University of Western Australia, as well as NSW DPI.

This work is part of a more than $3 million portfolio of GRDC investments into blackleg disease in canola. The GRDC has been a driving force behind canola research for the past two decades and is committed to improving varietal options for Australian growers.

Dr Raman said the identified Rlm13 gene provides complete protection against the fungal pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans, which causes blackleg disease on canola.

Canola“Identifying the new Rlm13 gene could lead to the development of new strategies to boost canola’s natural immunity for better disease management,” Dr Raman said.

“Blackleg disease is widespread in Australia and the devastating effects of this disease in canola can see reductions in seed yield by more than 50 per cent.”

Dr Raman said that the fungal pathogen that causes blackleg is highly adaptable and several major genes have already become ineffective in providing resistance under field conditions.

“Therefore, we continuously need to discover new sources of both major and minor genetic resistance in canola and its related species to stay ahead of the blackleg pathogen and to minimise yield losses occurring in Australian canola crops,” he said.

The research team used several thousand genomic markers to find the exact location of the Rlm13 gene within the canola genome.

To show its novelty, the NSW DPI research team re-sequenced the entire genomes of the parental lines of canola population derived from a cross between two Australian varieties, CB-Telfer and ATR-Cobbler and investigated structural variation, and lineage of Rlm13 with genes of Arabidopsis (a close relative of canola that diverged approximately 20 million years ago) and known canola blackleg resistance genes.

NSW DPI researchers used canola seedlings that were grown in a controlled glasshouse at Wagga Wagga Agricultural Institute for assessment of resistance.

New sources of resistance are highly sought after by canola breeding programs to increase diversity in the resistance gene pool for commercial distribution into new varieties. Canola breeding companies have requested breeding lines from NSW DPI.

The research appeared in Frontiers in Plant Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.654604

Rlm13 gene provides a protection against the fungal pathogen Leptosphaeria maculans, which causes blackleg disease on canola.