Iowa State researchers recently collaborated with colleagues at the University of Minnesota to develop a genetic technique that may protect cereal crops from a devastating virus called barley yellow dwarf virus.

The researchers used a process that results in virus-mediated resistance.

“[Scientists] take a gene from a virus, insert [it] into a plant, and the plant becomes resistant to the very virus from which the gene is derived,” said Guennadi Koev, graduate student in plant pathology.

Koev said the researchers demonstrated the technique on a variety of the oat plant that does not have commercial use. However, he said the research shows it will be possible to use the process on commercial crops such as wheat and corn.

The ISU lab prepared the gene that was used in developing the resistant oat plant.

“Using molecular techniques, we excised one gene out of the viral genome and prepared a special construct, which was then shot into the plant cells,” Koev said.

David Somers, professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota, conducted the lab work that actually spliced the gene into the plants.

W. Allen Miller, associate professor of plant pathology, is leading the effort at ISU. The research results recently were published in the journal Phytopathology.

“This is the first published report of true transgenic resistance to BYDV in any crop,” Miller said in a press release.

Ken Frey, ISU agronomy professor emeritus, said the new technique will benefit crops worldwide.

“This virus seems to be a pandemic type of disease; it’s all over the world. It is not something that just occurs in the Corn Belt,” he said in a press release.

Koev said many commercial crop varieties are difficult to manipulate. He predicted it will be some time before commercial resistant varieties are developed.

The research group also included former ISU graduate students B.R. Mohan, S.P. Dinesh-Kumar and Kimberly A. Torbert of the University of Minnesota’s agronomy and plant genetics department.