The VDHR research area will be Uniform Nursery based in the case of soft winter wheat and spring wheat.  States will be aligned with the uniform nurseries as follows: Uniform Regional Scab Nursery for Spring Wheat Parents (MN, MT, ND, SD); Uniform Northern Winter Wheat FHB Screening Nursery (IL, IN, KY, MI, MO, NY, OH); Uniform Southern Soft Red Winter Wheat FHB Screening Nursery (AR, GA, LA, MD, NC, VA).  VDHR research will be commodity-based in the case of barley, durum and hard winter wheat coordinated projects.

Each Uniform nursery will be coordinated by a regional committee, chaired by existing nursery coordinators. Nurseries will be conducted in collaboration with a pathologist wherever possible and a subset of promising entries may be grown at multiple locations in Integrated Management Trials.  The nurseries will also be evaluated for milling and baking quality, and haplotyped at the USDA regional genotyping labs. The most promising lines may be entered in the nurseries for a second year of testing at the lines originator’s request.  Collaborators will submit candidate parents for crossing, and prebreeding populations derived from these crosses/populations will be made available to all collaborators.  Mapping of new resistance sources will be accomplished through joint phenotyping of populations.  All collaborators must screen varieties planted commercially (>5% of wheat acreage) in their state for FHB resistance and provide this information to growers.

NOTE:  Individual proposed research projects in this area will not be solicited until FY10.