Ac. Newton et al., THE INTERACTION OF FERTILIZER TREATMENT WITH TOLERANCE TO POWDERY MILDEW IN SPRING BARLEY, Field crops research, 55(1-2), 1998, pp. 45-56
Tolerance to fungal disease in cereals has been reported but rarely co
nsidered important in field studies. We tested a wide range of spring
barley genotypes identified from previous field trials as potentially
tolerant or non-tolerant. These included cultivars, breeding lines and
segregants from crosses. Genotypes were put into trial over two years
and different fertiliser levels to test for environmental interaction
in yield response to disease. Mildew was assessed as either the area
under the disease progress curve (AUDPC) from visual scores, or as a b
iomass measurement using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). En
vironmental effects, expressed as differences between years, and asses
sment method had major interactions with tolerance expression, whilst
the effect of fertiliser was expressed mostly in the second year only.
Despite these interactions, some genotypes overall expressed a strong
tolerance or non-tolerance trait to disease, indicating a heritable c
omponent. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.