WHEAT crops infected by a fungus that is hostile to canola have been found to be protected against cereal diseases, according to research conducted by The University of Western Australia (UWA) and Huazhong Agricultural University in China.
The world-first research found that the fungus Sclerotinia, a disease of canola and pulses which causes direct damage to the plant by girdling the stem, would grow in wheat and not show any disease.
The study was led by Huazhong Agricultural University professor Dahong Jiang, alongside UWA School of Agriculture and Environment and Institute of Agriculture professor Martin Barbetti.
Professor Barbetti said that Sclerotinia was a major problem on canola in Australia and China, but wheat crops infected with the pathogen showed no sign of disease.
"When the Sclerotinia pathogen grows in wheat, it happens internally without showing any outside symptoms of disease or problems," professor Barbetti said.
"But more importantly, we have found that when Sclerotinia does grow in wheat, it effectively protects cereal plants against multiple fungal diseases and increases the growth and yield of crops in-field.
"It was discovered that the wheat yield went up, so the grain heads were longer and they had more and larger grains, plus it was also noticed that there were striking reductions in the levels of some cereal diseases which are important in both China and Australia."
According to the research, the wheat infected with Sclerotinia showed up to 60 per cent reduction in Fusarium Head Blight and up to 65pc reduction in stripe rust.
In terms of plant growth, the crops saw a yield increase of between 15pc and 18pc.
In both Australia and China many Sclerotinia pathogen strains contain a mycovirus - a virus that infects a fungus - which debilitates the Sclerotinia and means it can no longer cause serious disease on canola or pulse crops.
Professor Barbetti said the research found that mycovirus infected strains of Sclerotinia worked particularly well in cereals.
"It means there was a triple benefit of the increased cereal yield and reduced cereal diseases, plus you're using a Sclerotinia which is not going to contaminate the environment and cause lots of disease in subsequent canola crops," he said.
"It potentially has a strong beneficial effect on canola because what you're spreading with the mycovirus infected strains of Sclerotinia in the wheat is strains which will not cause disease problems in future canola crops.
"You're effectively increasing the proportion of debilitated strains of Sclerotinia within Australia."
Research has been done on mycoviruses in Sclerotinia across southern Australia which showed there were nearly 60 different mycoviruses present and of those, about two thirds of them were novel to Australia and don't occur anywhere else in the world.
"We're taking advantage of things that are naturally occurring and putting them to uses that people haven't thought about doing before," professor Barbetti said.
"It opens up a whole new sphere to take something that is a pathogen on one crop and use naturally occurring mycoviruses to make them not cause disease and transfer that to another crop to boost yield and get good control of other diseases."
While the majority of the field work has been conducted in China, professor Barbetti is working on securing funding to start up further research in Australia.
