Although Syrian high-yielding wheat cultivars grown under Mediterranean conditions include acceptable levels of resistance to biotic constraints, little is known about their susceptibility to Fusarium head blight (FHB), a harmful disease of wheat cultivation worldwide. The capacity of 16 fungal isolates of four FHB species to confer the disease on spikes and spikelets of six widely grown old and modern Syrian durum and bread wheat cultivars with known in vitro quantitative resistance to FHB was evaluated. Quantitative traits were visually assessed using spray and point inoculations for determining disease development rates, disease incidence (DI) and disease severity (DS) under controlled conditions. Differences in pathogenicity and susceptibility among wheat cultivars were observed, emphasizing the need for breeders to include aggressive isolates or a mixture of isolates representative of the FHB diversity in their screenings for selection of disease resistant cultivars. Bread wheat cultivars showed lower levels of spike and spikelet damage than durum cultivars regardless of the date of cultivar release. Overall, the six wheat cultivars expressed acceptable resistance levels to initial fungal infection and fungal spread. Quantitative traits showed significant correlation with previous standardized area under disease progress curve (AUDPCstandard) data generated in vitro. Thus, the predictive ability of AUDPCstandard appears to be crucial in assessing pathogenicity and resistance in adult wheat plants under controlled conditions. While in the Mediterranean countries the risk of disease is progressively increasing, the preliminary data in this report adds to our knowledge about four FHB species pathogenicity on a Syrian scale, where the environment is quite similar to some Mediterranean wheat growing areas, and show that Syrian cultivars could be new resistant donors with favorable agronomical characteristics in FHB-wheat breeding programs.

Quantitative resistance in barley to four Fusarium head blight (FHB) species was investigated in vitro. Nine components involved in three assays (detached leaf, modified Petridish and seedling tests) were compared on two widely grown Syrian barley cultivars: Arabi Aswad (AS) and Arabi Abiad (AB). On AB, inoculation with FHB species resulted in a significantly shorter latent period and larger lesion length of detached leaf inoculation, more standardized area under disease progress curve (AUDPCstandard) of modified Petridish inoculation and a higher percentage of infected seedlings of pin-point inoculation than on AS. The latent period of AB was 14.89% less than AS, lesion length of AS was 6.01% less than AB, AUDPCstandard of AS was 17.07% less than AB and the percentage of infected seedlings of AS was 4.87% less than AB. Inoculation with FHB species resulted in no significant differences in the other five components measured: incubation period of detached leaf inoculation, germination rate reduction and coleoptile length reduction of modified Petridish inoculation, percentage of infected seedlings of foliar-spraying inoculation and lesion length of clip-dipping inoculation. AS was more resistant to in vitro FHB infection than AB. The latent period and AUDPCstandard recorded the highest values compared with the lowest values for lesion length and percentage of infected seedlings. It seems that measurement of the latent period and AUDPCstandard may be useful in identifying barley cultivars which are highly susceptible or resistant to FHB at early stages.