9600487 Haymes The International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twentyfour months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a twelve-month postdoctoral research visit of Dr. Kenneth M. Haymes to work with Dr. ir A. M. P. den Nijs at the Centre for Plant Breeding and Reproductive Research (CPRO-DLO) in Wageningen, Netherlands. Dr. Haymes and Dr. den Nijs will use molecular techniques to obtain markers for regions of the strawberry genome that are linked to genes Pfr1, Pfr2 and Pfr6, which confer resistance to the pathogenic fungus Phytophthora fragariae Hickman (red stele root rot). They will also look at existing strawberry stocks for the presence of these markers to develop a rational breeding program for improved resistance to Phytophthora infection. A powerful mapping technique, amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) will be used following bulked segregant analysis to attempt to isolate markers closely linked to the Pfr1 marker. Bulked segregant analysis and AFLP will then be applied to obtain markers near to the other resistance genes. The commercial strawberry is octaploid and thus molecular markers are the best hope for accomplishing rational linkage studies of disease resistance and other traits. Once they obtain markers that are tightly linked to genes which increase resistance to fungal infection, plant stocks will be examined for the purpose of identifying appropriate breeding stocks to produce strawberry plants containing multiple resistance genes. ***
