Wheat scab is a serious disease in South China, especially in the mid-lower reaches of the Yangtze Fiver. This paper highlights some of the significant progress made on screening resistant germplasm, inheritance of resistance, relationships between resistance and agronomic traits, and breeding for wheat cultivars with resistance to scab in China. Although no immune materials are found in wheat and its relatives, the response to scab among varieties is significantly different. Some of the old, indigenous varieties, such as Wangshuibai and Jianzimai and improved varieties, such as Sumai 3 and Ning 7840, have high and stable resistance to scab, being the best sources of resistance worldwide. Scab resistance is quantitatively inherited and mainly controlled by additive genetic effects. Among resistant cultivars, both the number and chromosomal location of genes are different, which indicates that the diverse resistant genes can be recombined by intervarietal cross. We found no genotypic correlations between scab resistance and undesirable agronomic traits. Developing resistant cultivars by various breeding methods is possible. However, it will be the most effective to use multi-parent, convergent crosses and recurrent selection, because these methods can integrate scab resistance with high yield potential and better quality through the accumulation of diverse resistance genes. The development of the new breeding methods, especially biotechnology, will help to further raise the efficiency of breeding for scab resistance.
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