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IOWA STATE RESEARCHERS TO ENHANCE SOYBEAN RESISTANCE TO SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME
Feb. 15, 2013
American Soybean Association (ASA) reports:
Researchers at Iowa State University will use a grant totaling more than $5 million to strengthen the genetic resistance of soybeans to sudden death syndrome, a disease that has cost Iowa soybean producers millions in crop losses.
Madan Bhattacharyya, an associate professor of agronomy who will lead the research team, said that sudden death syndrome resistance in soybeans is encoded in numerous genes, each playing a small role in an individual plant's resistance to the disease.
Soybean sudden death syndrome is caused by a Fusarium fungus that infects the roots of the soybean plant. The pathogen has never been detected from the diseased leaves or other above-ground tissues. The research group has recently shown that a small protein produced by the pathogen in the roots is the major cause of foliar soybean sudden death syndrome.
The team has also shown that generation of a plant antibody against this protein enhances the disease resistance in transgenic soybean lines.
Read more here.
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