The names TR04281, TR04282 and TR04283 may not mean much today, but they could represent a dramatic shift in the fortunes of western Canadian barley growers as they battle Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) in the years ahead.

These three experimental barley lines show up to a whopping 50 percent reduction in levels of deoxynivalenol (DON), the FHB-produced mycotoxin, compared to typical current varieties, such as AC Metcalfe, as evidenced by trials conducted at the FHB nursery for barley in Brandon, Manitoba.

"These lines are among the first material from our program bred specifically for FHB resistance that are entering the registration trials," says Dr. Bill Legge, barley breeder and FHB nursery manager at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Brandon Research Centre. "Of the better ones in that group, the DON levels we've seen are 50 percent lower than they are in AC Metcalfe."

Progress at the Brandon-based FHB nursery is featured in the August edition of Western Grains Research Magazine, available on the Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF) Web site. Western Canadian wheat and barley growers are major investors in breeding research through the Wheat and Barley Check-off Funds, administered by WGRF. The Research Magazine offers "Ideas and issues for farmer research investors."

All three advanced AAFC Brandon lines are first-year entries in the 2004 co-op registration testing system. If they continue to perform well over three years in this Prairie-wide system, they can be put forward for registration. Allowing a couple years for seed increase and additional malting quality testing, they could be in farmers' hands within five years.

"We'll watch them closely over the next several years, but we expect the Fusarium resistance to hold up well," says Legge. "We have a number of years of nursery data now, so we're reasonably confident the improvements we've seen are real and stable."

The new lines are the first of several on the way that signal a key breakthrough in the long-term research battle with Fusarium, which has been a major effort since FHB epidemics in 1993 and 1994. Since 2000, the effort has included the Brandon-based FHB nursery, which has allowed researchers to screen thousands of barley lines annually for FHB response.

"In the first years of the nursery, the focus has been on examining early generation material from crosses segregated for FHB resistance, along with evaluating existing barley varieties and advanced breeding material. That has allowed us to identify the best existing material for advancement in breeding programs and to provide farmers with information on the resistance of current varieties. Now, with support from the nursery, we've advanced to the stage where some of our best two-row barley material, bred specifically for FHB resistance, is entering registration trials."

The advanced AAFC Brandon material is a recent highlight of the broad progress to come from several institutions, including the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre and the Alberta-based barley breeding group headquartered at Lacombe. "We're seeing a shift in the FHB resistance material that's going through the nursery - we're seeing better material overall," says Legge.

Both the Fusarium research and the funding that supports it is a strong co-operative effort, says Dr. Keith Degenhardt, Hughenden, Alta., producer and Chair of WGRF. The AAFC Fusarium research effort in barley has been supported in part by the AAFC Matching Investment Initiative (MII), WGRF, the Agri-Food Research and Development Initiative (ARDI) and the Agriculture Development Fund (ADF). For 2004, the effort was further strengthened with new funding support from the Canadian Wheat Board.

"This collaborative funding support is a strong signal of the high priority FHB solutions are to western Canadian farmers and their industry," says Degenhardt. "It's also a reinforcement of the importance of working together to achieve those solutions."

WGRF is farmer funded and directed. The Foundation supports Fusarium research through its Barley Check-off Fund, which supports barley breeding programs, and through special funds allocated from interest generated by the Reserve Fund of the Barley Check-off Fund.