The Breeding of Winter-Hardy Malting Barley

Abstract

In breeding winter malting barley, one recurring strategy is to cross a current preferred spring malting barley to a winter barley. This is because spring malting barleys have the greatest amalgamation of trait qualities desirable for malting and brewing. Spring barley breeding programs can also cycle their material through numerous generations each year—some managing even six—which greatly accelerates combining desirable alleles to generate new lines. In a winter barley breeding program, a single generation per year is the limit when the field environment is used and about two generations per year if vernalization and greenhouse facilities are used. However, crossing the current favored spring malting barley to a winter barley may have its downsides, as winter-hardiness too may be an amalgamation of desirable alleles assembled together that confers the capacity for prolonged cold temperature conditions. In this review I touch on some general criteria that give a variety the distinction of being a malting barley and some of the general trends made in the breeding of spring malting barleys. But the main objective of this review is to pull together different aspects of what we know about winter-hardiness from the seemingly most essential aspect, which is survival in the field, to molecular genetics and gene regulation, and then finish with ideas that might help further our insight for predictability purposes.

Active and adaptive plasticity in a changing climate

“…In a cereal food crop, for example, grain number, size, and nutritional quality relate directly to market value (e.g., [28]). In further contrast to natural populations, selection in an agricultural setting applies over the commercial longevity of the variety or breeding line, with even annual agricultural crops undergoing selection over many years or even decades (e.g., [29]). Thus, crops may be considered closer to wild perennials than annuals, noting that there is no trade-off between individual survival and fecundity.…”

Genomic approaches to enhance adaptive plasticity to cope with soil constraints amidst climate change in wheat

“…In cereal production, agricultural fitness correlates with yield and/or quality‐related characteristics, which is dependent on the enhancement of plasticity traits (Tables 2 and 3). Selection of lines is dependent on the fitness and commercial longevity of the variety that reflects on consistency for high yield, given the context of variable conditions (Stockinger, 2021). The genetic resources that exhibit high fitness could be effectively used to mitigate challenges faced by climate change (Fischer & Edmeades, 2010).…”

Genome editing to re-domesticate and accelerate use of barley crop wild relatives

“…This could be considered a limitation, however, the genes behind the beneficial traits in the CWR do not need to be known; they are inherent in the plant. IV RD could be significantly faster compared to normal breeding, perhaps 1-5 years for RD compared to up to 10 years for winter barley breeding, and/or accelerate the pre-breeding process for CWR (Fernie and Yan, 2019;Hickey et al, 2019;Lenaerts et al, 2019;Stockinger, 2021;Zhu and Zhu, 2021). V RD could help break linkage drag by mutating desired traits without the carryover of undesired traits coupled to the QTL (See 4.2 NUD1).…”