LAUSR

Abstract Fusarium head blight (FHB) is a major disease on wheat crop leading to significant yield losses and poor quality of infected grains worldwide. From a breeder’s point of view, a simple and reliable test for assessing this disease would enhance our capacity in identifying wheat resistance sources and highly pathogenic isolates. To achieve this objective, a test involving the inoculation of a detached head (DHT) maintained in vitro was used to determine the reaction of six durum and bread wheat cultivars to disease and pathogenicity of four Fusarium species. The estimation of disease incidence and disease severity detected using spray and point inoculation on detached wheat heads, respectively, enabled discrimination among wheat cultivars differing in their susceptibility to the pathogen and 16 FHB isolates of contrasting pathogenicity. Significant correlations were found between in vitro DHT values in seedlings and adult plants, highlighting that this testing procedure was reliable. The established assay using in vitro DHT in this first in-depth report enables a simple, fast and reliable screening of the susceptibility of durum and bread wheat to FHB pathogens and pathogenicity of diverse Fusarium species and should be useful for many types of studies on this disease.