Exotic barley germplasms in breeding for resistance to soil-borne viruses

Summary Soil-borne mosaic inducing viruses, i.e., barley mild mosaic virus (BaMMV), barley yellow mosaic virus (BaYMV), and BaYMV-2, cause one of the most important diseases of winter barley in Western Europe. Since resistance of all commercial European barley cultivars is due to a single recessive gene (ym4) which is not effective against BaYMV-2, exotic barley germplasms (Hordeum vulgare L., H. spontaneum Koch) were screened for resistance to the different viruses and analyzed for genetic diversity concerning BaMMV resistance. In these studies it turned out that resistance to BaMMV is entirely inherited recessively and that a high degree of genetic diversity concerning resistance is present within the barley gene pool at least to BaMMV. Therefore, exotic barley germplasms are a very useful source for the incorporation of different resistance genes into barley breeding lines, thereby enabling the breeder to create cultivars adapted to cultivation in the growing area of fields infested by soil-borne viruses. Furthermore, in order to obtain more information on these germplasms they were evaluated for agronomic traits and isozyme, RFLP and RAPD analyses were carried out on these varieties to detect markers linked to the respective resistance genes and to obtain information on the genetic similarity between yellow mosaic resistant barley accessions derived from different parts of the world. Actual results of these studies are briefly reviewed.