Browsing by Author "Kafle, Madan"

Oat (Avena sativa L.) is the second largest cereal crop (in terms of production) in Finland and the prevalence of Fusarium graminearum in Nordic region is increasing. Infection by F. graminearum causes fusarium head blight (FHB) leading to accumulation of mycotoxin (deoxynivalenol) in addition to the reduction of yield. European union has set the limit for deoxynivalenol for unprocessed oat as 1.75 ppm. Therefore, it is a challenge for the production and marketing of oat to stay within the limit. Being aware of these problems and lack of much understanding in this area, this study was carried out at Boreal plant breeding company located in Jokioinen, Finland. It was aimed to check for associations between traits and markers in an oat field artificially inoculated with F. graminearum. The traits under consideration were plant height, maturity class, heading date, anther extrusion, deoxynivalenol content and germination capacity of kernels. To check the correlation between the traits and explore the variation existing in our germplasm was also the focus of this study. The experimental field was sown as row plots and after one month of sowing, it was inoculated with oat seeds infected with F. graminearum. The phenotypic data were recorded on suitable time and the genome-wide association study was carried out using genome association and prediction integrated tool in R software. Among the traits under consideration, maturity class showed an association with the markers and showed significant positive correlation with deoxynivalenol accumulation and can be considered for further study.