Low temperature tolerance in barley
Changing climate will likely create new opportunities to exploit winter barley (planted in
the fall) as part of local cropping systems. Fall planting and earlier harvest provide growers with additional options to optimize their operations, creates opportunities for higher yields than spring barley, and can provide important ecosystem services (limit soil erosion, sequester carbon as organic matter, provide wildlife habitat, and reduce nutrient leakage to surface and subsurface water reservoirs). The challenge for winter barley is improving low temperature tolerance (LTT) in order to ensure stable production under fall planting. We will be assembling a worldwide collection of winter barley to evaluate for winter survival in the field. We will
also genotype this collection with a large set of genetic markers and use that information to map the position of genes that increase LTT in barley. This information will be useful to develop breeding strategies that use genetic markers to develop barley varieties with improved LTT.
Kevin Smith
