Effect of wheat cultivar mixtures on populations of Puccinia striiformis races*

This study quantifies the frequency of simple and complex races (races that can infect two or more components) of Puccinia striiformis in mixtures of wheat cultivars possessing different race-specific resistance genes. Treatments were designed so that the complex race changed depending on the host mixture, thus enabling us to observe the influence of pathogen complexity in different genetic backgrounds. Six cultivar mixtures and one pure stand of winter wheat were inoculated with three races of P. striiformis at two locations for two seasons. Potted plants of three winter wheat cultivars, each susceptible to one of the three races of the pathogen, were used to sample the pathogen during the field epidemics. Disease incidence on the differential cultivars was used to calculate the proportion of the three races in each treatment. The specific cultivars included in the mixtures influenced the frequencies of the three races. Increasing the number of virulent races in a mixture reduced the frequency of the complex race relative to the other two races. The results suggest that genetic background of the pathogen race, host composition, and interaction among pathogen races may be as important as cost of virulence in determining race frequencies in mixtures.