Intercontinental trials reveal stable QTL for Northern corn leaf blight resistance in Europe and in Brazil

KEY MESSAGE: NCLB is the most devastating leaf disease in European maize, and the introduction of Brazilian resistance donors can efficiently increase the resistance levels of European maize germplasm. ABSTRACT: Northern corn leaf blight (NCLB) is one of the most devastating leaf pathogens in maize (Zea mays L.). Maize cultivars need to be equipped with broad and stable NCLB resistance to cope with production intensification and climate change. Brazilian germplasm is a great source to increase low NCLB resistance levels in European materials, but little is known about their effect in European environments. To investigate the usefulness of Brazilian germplasm as NCLB resistance donors, we conducted multi-parent QTL mapping, evaluated the potential of marker-assisted selection as well as genome-wide selection of 742 F(1)-derived DH lines. The line per se performance was evaluated in one location in Brazil and six location-by-year combinations (= environments) in Europe, while testcrosses were assessed in two locations in Brazil and further 10 environments in Europe. Jointly, we identified 17 QTL for NCLB resistance explaining 3.57–30.98% of the genotypic variance each. Two of these QTL were detected in both Brazilian and European environments indicating the stability of these QTL in contrasting ecosystems. We observed moderate to high genomic prediction accuracies between 0.58 and 0.83 depending on population and continent. Collectively, our study illustrates the potential use of tropical resistance sources to increase NCLB resistance level in applied European maize breeding programs. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1007/s00122-020-03682-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.