Indication of Quantitative Multiple Disease Resistance to Foliar Pathogens in Pinus radiata D.Don in New Zealand

Increasing resistance against foliar diseases is an important goal in the Pinus radiata D.Don breeding program in New Zealand, and screening for resistance has been in place for some time, since the late 1960s. The current study presents results of four progeny trials within the breeding program to investigate whether multiple disease resistance could be detected against three different needle diseases in P. radiata: Dothistroma needle blight (DNB) caused by Dothistroma septosporum, Cyclaneusma needle cast (CNC) caused by Cyclaneusma minus, and red needle cast (RNC) caused by Phytophthora pluvialis. Four progeny trials in the North Island of New Zealand were available to estimate heritabilities and between-trait genetic correlations. Two of the trials were assessed for DNB, involving 63 full-sib families. A third trial was assessed for CNC, involving 172 half-sib families, and a fourth trial was assessed for RNC, involving 170 half-sib families. Disease resistances had moderate estimates of heritability (0.28–0.48) in all trials. We investigated the potential for multiple disease resistance to the three foliar diseases by estimating genetic correlations between disease resistances using a spatial linear mixed model. The correlation between DNB and CNC resistance was favorable and strong (0.81), indicating that genotypes that are highly resistant to DNB also have a high resistance to CNC. These results suggest that selection based on resistance to DNB could allow for simultaneous indirect selection for resistance to CNC, usually only expressed at a later age. This would allow selections to be made earlier due to the earlier expression of DNB than CNC and reduce the number of expensive disease assessments being undertaken. Conversely, genetic correlation estimates for RNC with DNB and CNC were close to zero, and very imprecise. As such, later-age assessments for this disease would still be required.