Abstract
Maize (Zea mays L.), an important cereal for human and animal nutrition, is usually affected by multiple co-occurring pathogens that reduce production. Argentina is the fourth maize producer worldwide, with common rust (CR), northern corn leaf blight (NCLB), southern corn leaf blight (SCLB) and bacterial leaf streak (BLS) being important yield-limiting diseases in most maize producing areas. In this study, we aimed to identify genotypes with multiple disease resistance (MDR) for the introgression of broad-sense resistance into temperate maize breeding programs. We evaluated 87 genotypes from the Argentine public temperate inbred maize collection available from Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA) for their response to CR, NCLB, SCLB and BLS in up to five environments of Argentina. We compared four strategies to select sources of resistance to multiple diseases that could be used in breeding programs. Significant genotypic variation and high heritabilities were found for all disease resistances. The panel of inbred lines had numerous genotypes resistant to CR (80%) and BLS (78%), whereas genotypes resistant to NCLB (26%) or SCLB (30%) were less frequent. However, we were able to identify 12 genotypes as potential candidates for the introgression of broad-sense resistance. Our results indicate that the selection based on principal component analysis (PCA) was the most accurate methodology to detect MDR across all accessions. Maize studies based on MDR are scarce; to our knowledge, this is the first study conducted on Argentine germplasm. These findings will contribute to the strengthening of broad-sense resistance in temperate breeding programs as well as to the study of MDR detection.
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The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The code developed for this study is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We highly acknowledge Dr. Francisco Canteros and MSc. Jorge Parrado, IIACS Leales (Instituto de Investigación Animal del Chaco Semiárido-INTA) and Agr. Eng. María Laura Ferreira, INTA EEA Manfredi (Instituto Nacional de tecnología Agropecuaria, Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Manfredi) for planting and conducting the trials in Leales and Manfredi, respectively. We also highly acknowledge Alejo Rodríguez, Guillermina Buzetti, Ivana Tesei, Laureano Español and Virginia Zelada, UNNOBA (Universidad Nacional Noroeste Buenos Aires), for helping with field evaluations in Pergamino, Buenos Aires. We greatly appreciate the technical support of the Maize Breeding team at EEA INTA Pergamino.
Funding
This research was conducted with the financial support of the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA), Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNNOBA)-Programa de Promoción de la Investigación Científica EXP 2691/2019 and the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) within the frame of the program “Doctoral Scholarships CONICET/INTA, Grant No. 939”.
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Juliana Iglesias planned the experiments and supervised the project. MBK, LDM and JI collected the phenotypic data. MBK and LN conducted the statistical analyses. This manuscript was partially developed from a undergraduate thesis (originally written in Spanish) and submitted by LN to the Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNNOBA). MBK and JI wrote the first draft of the manuscript. JI, GDLC and EG thoroughly revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Kistner, M.B., Nazar, L., Montenegro, L.D. et al. Detecting sources of resistance to multiple diseases in Argentine maize (Zea mays L.) germplasm. Euphytica 218, 48 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-022-03000-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10681-022-03000-4