Exploring the resilience of wheat crops grown in short rotations through minimising the build-up of an important soil-borne fungal pathogen

Given the increasing demand for wheat which is forecast, cropping of wheat in short rotations will likely remain a common practice. However, in temperate wheat growing regions the soil-borne fungal pathogen Gaeumannomyces tritici becomes a major constraint on productivity. In cultivar rotation field experiments on the Rothamsted Farm (Hertfordshire, UK) we demonstrated a substantial reduction in take-all disease and grain yield increases of up to 2.4 tonnes/ha when a low take-all inoculum building wheat cultivar was grown in the first year of wheat cropping. Phenotyping of 71 modern elite wheat cultivars for the take-all inoculum build-up trait across six diverse trial sites identified a few cultivars which exhibited a consistent lowering of take-all inoculum build-up. However, there was also evidence of a significant interaction effect between trial site and cultivar when a pooled Residual Maximum Likelihood (REML) procedure was conducted. There was no evidence of an unusual rooting phenotype associated with take-all inoculum build-up in two independent field experiments and a sand column experiment. Together our results highlight the complex interactions between wheat genotype, environmental conditions and take-all inoculum build-up. Further work is required to determine the underlying genetic and mechanistic basis of this important phenomenon.