Meeting the Challenge of Yellow Rust in Cereal Crops - ICARDA

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Screening of CIMMYT bread
wheat germplasm and postrelease
monitoring of
Bakhtawar 92 against yellow rust
(Puccinia striiformis f.sp. tritici) in
Pakistan
S.J.A. Shah, 1 T. Mohmmad, 1 I. Ali, 1 F. Azam, 1 S. Hussain, 2 A.R. Rattu 3 and
J.I. Mirza 3
1. Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Tarnab, Peshawar, Pakistan
2. Department of Plant Pathology, NWFP Agricultural University, Peshawar,
Pakistan
3. Crop Diseases Research Programme (CDRP), National Agriculture Research Centre
(NARC), Islamabad, Pakistan
Introduction
Yellow or stripe rust, caused by Puccinia striiformis Westend. f.sp. tritici, is
potentially a destructive pathogen of wheat and one of the important factors
limiting grain yield in wheat worldwide (Sonmez, Keskin and Gocmen, 2002).
In Pakistan, wheat is an economically important crop worth Rupees
(Rs) 150 billion annually in Pakistan, and a one percent loss in production is
Rs 1.5 billion (Kisana, Mujahid and Mustafa, 2003). Yellow rust occurs
regularly and has been responsible for various epidemics in the country during
the past fifty years, with national losses in 1978 and 1995 alone accounting for
US$ 116 million (Hassan, 1968; Kidwai, 1979; Roelfs and Bushnell, 1985; Saari,
Hashmi and Kisana, 1995). Development of wheat cultivars is carried out by
public sector organizations in Pakistan, where the cost of developing a single
cultivar is around Rs 2.7 million (Bhutta and Hussain, 2003). It therefore
becomes essential to monitor the durability of deployed resistance after its
release for early warning of the need to replace the cultivar and avoid
economic losses due to disease.
Yellow rust resistance in wheat has been a major goal of numerous breeding
programmes (Cetin, Dusunceli and Albustan, 1998; Dusunceli et al., 1998;
Khan, Yaqub and Nasir, 1998; Hussain et al., 1999; Pasquini et al., 1998). Genetic