Determining the effect of Barley Cellular Apoptosis Susceptibilty (CAS) gene silencing on powdery mildew disease resistance

Barley, an economically important cereal plant, comes after wheat, rice and maize in terms of planting area in the world. powdery mildew disease, caused by blumeria graminis f. sp. hordei (bgh), is one of the important diseases of barley. cellular apoptosis susceptibility (cas) gene was over experessed during powdery mildew disease in barley. since there is limited information on r gene-mediated signaling cascade, we sought to understand the way in which cas protein function in powdery mildew resistance or susceptibility response. towards understanding the role of hvcas in pathogen response, the gene was silenced by barley stripe mosaic virus (bsmv) induced gene silencing. the level of hvcas mrna in silenced plant samples showed 54% reduction with respect to the control group (bsmv:00). however, there was no considerable change observed in resistance or susceptibility response to powdery mildew in hvcas-silenced plant samples.