Inducing novel resistance gene in wheat towards stem rust to improve food security

Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is one of the three most important cereal worldwide that provides a major source of daily protein and nutrition for humans. Unfortunately, this crop yield capacity is affected by both biotic and abiotic stresses. Stem rust is one of the most globally devastating wheat diseases of wheat that caused by fungal pathogen Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici (Pgt). This diseases can decrease up to 100% yield loss on susceptible varieties. The emergence of important races of pathogen specially the Ug99, increases the need for more genetic diversity in this crop. Unfortunately, wheat has a narrow genetic bottleneck, whereas wild relatives such as Rye (Secale cereale) can increase its genetic limitations and has served as an excellent source of genetic variability for improving bread wheat against stresses. Therefore, many wheat-rye introgression lines have been developed at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) to increase genetic diversity for wheat improvement. Some of these introgression lines have shown good resistance to important races of stem rust