A deletion mutation in TaHRC confers Fhb1 resistance to Fusarium head blight in wheat

• Published in: Nature genetics Vol. 51; no. 7; pp. 1099 - 1105
• Main Authors: Su, Zhenqi, Bernardo, Amy, Tian, Bin, Chen, Hui, Wang, Shan, Ma, Hongxiang, Cai, Shibin, Liu, Dongtao, Zhang, Dadong, Li, Tao, Trick, Harold, St. Amand, Paul, Yu, Jianming, Zhang, Zengyan, Bai, Guihua
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.07.2019; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 631/208/2491; 631/208/711; Agriculture; Alleles; Amino Acid Sequence; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Bioengineering; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Blight; Calcium-binding protein; Cancer Research; Cereal crops; Chromosome Mapping; Chromosomes, Plant; Codon; Crop production; Disease; Disease Resistance - genetics; Fusarium; Fusarium - physiology; Fusarium graminearum; Fusarium head blight; Gene deletion; Gene expression; Gene Function; Gene mapping; Gene sequencing; Genetic aspects; Genetic Markers; Genomes; Genomics; Germplasm; Haplotypes; Histidine; Human Genetics; Kinases; Letter; Mutation; Phylogeny; Plant Diseases - genetics; Plant Diseases - microbiology; Plant Proteins - genetics; Proteins; Quantitative Trait Loci; Sequence Deletion; Triticum - genetics; Triticum - microbiology; Wheat
• ISSN: 1061-4036; 1546-1718; 1546-1718
• DOI: 10.1038/s41588-019-0425-8

Fusarium head blight (FHB), which is mainly caused by Fusarium graminearum , is a destructive wheat disease that threatens global wheat production. Fhb1 , a quantitative trait locus discovered in Chinese germplasm, provides the most stable and the largest effect on FHB resistance in wheat. Here we show that TaHRC , a gene that encodes a putative histidine-rich calcium-binding protein, is the key determinant of Fhb1 -mediated resistance to FHB. We demonstrate that TaHRC encodes a nuclear protein conferring FHB susceptibility and that a deletion spanning the start codon of this gene results in FHB resistance. Identical sequences of the TaHRC-R allele in diverse accessions indicate that Fhb1 had a single origin, and phylogenetic and haplotype analyses suggest that the TaHRC-R allele most likely originated from a line carrying the Dahongpao haplotype. This discovery opens a new avenue to improve FHB resistance in wheat, and possibly in other cereal crops, by manipulating TaHRC sequence through bioengineering approaches. Genetic studies using map-based cloning, gene editing, RNA interference, haplotyping and association analyses identify a deletion in TaHRC as a key determinant of Fhb1 -mediated resistance to Fusarium head blight in wheat.