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Barley yellow dwarf virus–PAV (BYDV‐PAV) is the most serious and widespread virus of cereals worldwide. Natural resistance genes against this luteovirus give inadequate control, and previous attempts to introduce synthetic resistance into cereals have produced variable results. In an attempt to generate barley with protection against BYDV‐PAV, plants were transformed with a transgene designed to produce hairpin (hp)RNA containing BYDV‐PAV sequences. From 25 independent barley lines transformed with the BYDV‐PAV hpRNA construct, nine lines showed extreme resistance to the virus and the majority of these contained a single transgene. In the progeny of two independent transgenic lines, inheritance of a single transgene consistently correlated with protection against BYDV‐PAV. This protection was rated as immunity because the virus could not be detected in the challenged plants by ELISA nor …