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Abstract Fusarium head blight (FHB) of wheat is caused by Fusarium graminearum which produces many secondary metabolites including the trichothecene mycotoxins deoxynivalenol (vomitoxin) and 3‐acetyldeoxynivalenol. Coleoptile tissue segements from 14 spring wheat cultivars were exposed to the F. graminearum metabolites deoxynivalenol, 3‐acetyldeoxynivalenol, butenolide (all known mycotoxins), sambucinol, culmorin and dihydroxycalonectrin in a bioassay. The tissue of most cultivars was inhibited, at a concentration of 10 −6 M by the trichothecenes tested and up to 10 −3 M for the other compounds. Deoxynivalenol and 3‐acetyldeoxynivalenol, which affect protein synthesis at the ribosome, are therefore potent phytotoxins in addition to being mycotoxins. The resistance or susceptibility of each cultivar to FHB was established in a field experiment. A comparison of the two sets of data indicated that resistant cultivars could tolerate much higher concentrations of the metabolites tested than susceptible cultivars. Some resistant material can tolerate 10 to 1000 times the concentration of the trichothecenes, compared with susceptible cultivars, with no effect on growth. The data suggest that it may be possible to screen germplasm rapidly for FHB resistance in vitro and a new type of resistance in wheat to this disease is proposed based on the apparent insensitivity to trichothecenes by resistant cultivars, additional to the three types of resistance described in the literature.
Wang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.