Introgression of crown rust resistance from diploid oat Avena strigosa into hexaploid cultivated oat A. sativa by two methods: Direct crosses and through an initial 2x·4x synthetic hexaploid

New sources of resistance to crown rust, Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae (Eriks.), the major fungal disease of cultivated oat, Avena sativa L. (2n = 6x = 42), are constantly needed due to frequent, rapid shifts in the virulence pattern of the pathogen. Crown rust resistance identified in the diploid oat A. strigosa (Schreb.) (2n = 2x = 14) accession CI6954SP was transferred into cultivated oat using two methods: direct cross of the diploid to a hexaploid cultivar facilitated by embryo rescue, and initial cross of the diploid to a wild tetraploid oat to make a synthetic hexaploid for subsequent crossing to a hexaploid cultivar. Two tetraploids, a crown rust resistant A. murphyi (Ladiz.) accession P12 and a susceptible A. insularis (Ladiz.) accession INS-1, were used in the 2x·4x crosses. Resistant backcross-derived lines were recovered by both methods. Although the 2x·4x synthetic method did not require the laborious discovery and rescue of an infrequent initial hybrid embryo of the direct cross, the direct cross method provided more rapid backcross recovery of plants with high fertility, full transmission of resistance, and desired plant and seed phenotypes. A suppressor effect, present initially but segregating in backcrosses, appeared to come from the CI6954SP donor and is the same as, or analogous to, suppression by an oat line with the crown rust resistance gene Pc38. No resistance from A. murphyi P12 was detected in advanced generations when it was introduced either as a component of a synthetic hexaploid or in direct crosses to A. sativa, indicating suppression of its resistance in interploidy combinations. That the dominant resistance gene transferred from CI6954SP and a gene Pc94 introgressed earlier from a different A. strigosa accession may be the same or quite similar to one another is indicated by their in-common specificity to suppression of resistance expression, susceptibility to a newly recovered rust isolate, and close linkage to the molecular marker SCAR94-2. The introgressed resistance genes from the different sources, even if the same, may have different cultivar genomic introgression sites, which would allow tests of dosage effects on resistance expression.