Helping Wheat Farmers Dust Off the Rust

ARS researchers are developing new lines of wheat that will greatly benefit crop farmers. Stripe rust is a fungal disease that causes yield losses up to 100% in wheat at the field level (where a single variety is grown) and up to 25% across wheat fields in certain states. It's one of the biggest issues facing wheat farmers. 

ARS scientists in Pullman, WA, have been developing new lines of wheat that are resistant to stripe rust. Recently, scientists identified a new line that expresses resistance to the current population of stripe rust strains when plants grow old and the weather becomes warm, called high-temperature adult-plant (HTAP) resistance. The lines with HTAP resistance will be useful for breeding programs to develop new elite wheat varieties with durable stripe rust resistance for farmers in the U.S.