Harnessing within-cultivar variation to identify hidden genetic resistance using single plant-omics

Abstract

Abstract Fusarium graminearum is a fungal pathogen that causes scab or head blight in small grain cereals and threatens global cereal production. Disease progression varies widely among individual plants of the same cultivar, reflecting both genetic and environmental heterogeneity. This complicates the identification of early host responses, because each individual plant in a population is at a slightly different phase of disease progression. Here we apply single plant-transcriptomics to a population of 121 malt-barley exposed to F. graminearum , enabling us to reconstruct a temporal sequence of regulatory processes during early infection. We identified several disease-resistance associated genetic variants that are already endemic in this high-yielding cultivar, suggesting potential as br