Breeding for Resistance to White Mold in Soybean
2012
- UW-Madison
Project Media
White mold of soybean continues to be an important disease of soybean. The boom or bust nature of white mold is problematic for developing a management plan for this disease. Defensive trait packages have improved dramatically for soybean varieties the past 10 to 20 years. However, this is not the case for white mold. Complete and stable resistance white mold has yet to be incorporated into a commercial soybean variety. There are several factors that contribute to this situation. First, not all seed companies consider white mold as a primary defensive trait. Although numerous sources of resistance are available, most sources are ancestral varieties and are primitive for yield and other agronomic traits. A major bottleneck appears to be the difficulty of moving white mold resistance into high yield potential varieties. Lastly, many varieties are rated as tolerant to white mold, but few provide a consistent performance from field to field in years with high white mold potential.