Wheat powdery mildew(Blumeria graminis f.sp.tritici) is the one of main wheat diseases in China.Based on the internal transcribed spacer(ITS) sequences of ribosome of B.graminis f.sp.tritici,three molecular primer pairs(F1/R,F2/R and F3/R) were designed to detect the fungal pathogen of wheat powdery mildew.The species specificity of these primers was confirmed.F1/R was demonstrated a higher sensitivity than the other two primer pairs,and could detect as low as 1 pg DNA of B.graminis f.sp.tritici.Furthermore,F1/R primer pair was used to detect the pathogen DNA extracted from wheat leaves showing chlorosis and typical symptoms of powdery mildew caused by artificial inoculation with B.graminis f.sp.tritici.The preliminary results demonstrated the usefulness of this primer pair and its potential applications in efficient detection of wheat powdery mildew pathogen from leaves with latent infections at early growth stages of wheat.
