| Defining barley varietal traits for climate change mitigation and adaptation with emphasis on reduced inputs and variable water |
| Student: Paulina Aboyadana Industry partner: KWS Lochow Supervisors: Dr Luke Ramsay, Dr Joanne Russell (JHI), Dr Jorunn Bos (UoD) and Dr Klaus Oldach (KWS) |
| Objectives |
| To fulfil future demand, there is a need to improve barley grain yield as well as reduce variation in yield across locations and years in Europe despite the environmental pressures caused by climate change. Grain yield is determined by components such as grain weight, number of grains per area and number of productive tillers (stems) per area. These yield traits are controlled by both genes and environmental factors, indicating that plants with better genetic makeup will produce high grain yield when grown in conditions of adequate water, plant nutrition, light and temperature. However, the increased incidence of unfavourable weather conditions such as irregular rainfall patterns and high temperatures due to climate change threatens grain yields and yield components of existing elite cultivars. Also, increased average temperatures can shorten time to maturity reducing grain yield. Therefore, plant breeders need to expand the genetic variation of their breeding materials for the development of new cultivars that respond positively to the changing environment by consistently yielding well across locations and years. Older barley varieties and landraces are a potential source of novel variation for traits important for climate adaptation considering their past selection under diverse environmental conditions. A Nested Association Mapping (NAM) population has been produced within the KWS pre-breeding programme in collaboration with the James Hutton Institute. The population of 394 inbred lines (NAM-400) arises between crossing elite cultivar KWS-Irina to thirteen different landraces and backcrossing to KWS-Irina. Thus, the NAM-400 lines have majority of KWS-Irina genes or traits and with severally distinct introgression regions (genes) from their respective landrace parent. Some of the NAM-400 lines from previous field evaluation in Dundee have shown consistent higher yields than the elite parent KWS-Irina across three years, indicating the potential of the NAM population for detailed studies. Therefore, this research aims to identify key traits associated with landrace introgressed regions for climate change adaptation and mitigation. The research objectives are to evaluate the NAM-400 lines for yield, yield components and related traits through field trials and glasshouse/laboratory experiments; study the effect of nitrogen fertilizer levels on the agronomic traits in this population; Identify genomic regions and potential candidate genes for yield stability and other agronomic traits; identify beneficial genes derived from the landrace parent and to validate causal gene(s) underlying the genotypic adaptation to climate change. |
| Progress to date |
| Future plans |