Stripe rust, which is caused by Puccinia striiformis f.sp.tritici, is a devastating disease that affects wheat crops worldwide.Adult plant resistance (APR) has recently received much attention due to its non-race-specific and durable resistance.Previous studies on wheat APR to Pst have involved genetic analyses, but these studies were limited in terms of the examination of transcriptional regulation,particularly for WRKY transcription factors (TFs).Here, we characterize a novel wheat WRKY gene,TaWRKY41.Subcellular localization demonstrated that TaWRKY41 is a WRKY TF associated with nuclear localization, and TaWRKY41 protein possesses a separate region for mediating transcriptional activation at the C-terminus (381-430) by yeast one-hybrid analyses.The TaWRKY41 transcript levels were sharply elevated at the early infection stage in adult plants.Disease resistance and salicylic acid (SA)-regulated Pathogenesis-Related 1 (PR1) gene expression was weakened in TaWRKY41-knockdown adult plants via improved virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS).The silencing of wheat phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (TaPAL), a SA biosynthesis-related gene, resulted in the reduced expression of TaWRKY41 in adult plants.Furthermore, the expression of TaWRKY41 was highly induced after treating adult plants with exogenous SA.Taken together, these results showed that TaWRKY41 likely contributes to wheat APR to Pst via the SA pathway.