Annual Progress Report on Malting Barley Research March, 2007

Other Barley Research:
Feed Program: The total number of crosses made for the barley breeding program in
2006 was approximately 500. Of these, 350 were malt types. Thus the remaining
crosses were feed and specialty types for high beta-glucan and low phytic acid. The
non-malt part of the breeding program is tested in early generations in conjunction with
the malt types, and only after line derivation are they separated. Feed types are tested
at three fewer locations than are malt types and feed populations are typically not
advanced via winter nurseries.
Mapping studies:
We are advancing several mapping populations: one for high beta-glucan and four for
high diastatic power. The high beta-glucan population (F7:9) will be evaluated for QTL in
2008 at three locations. This is a collaborative effort with Dr Eric Jackson at Aberdeen.
The high diastatic power populations are currently at the F3 stage and are being
advanced via single seed descent in the greenhouse. The high DP work is a
collaborative effort with Eric Jackson, Al Budde, Mark Schmidt, and Cynthia Henson.
Stripe Rust effort:
We are collaborating with Dr Pat Hayes (and others) to introgress QTL for stripe rust
resistance from the i-Bison lines into our breeding program using marker assisted
selection. This research is in the beginning phase as we have recently developed F1
populations between the stripe rust donor and our elite breeding lines. In addition to the
mapping effort per se, we plan to incorporate these sources of resistance into our best
winter (Charles) and spring (Sublette) malting lines.
CAP grant:
We evaluated our 96 CAP breeding lines (spring types) for phenotypic characteristics
and malt quality parameters at three locations in 2006 (Aberdeen, Filer, and Fenn for
six-rowed types, and Aberdeen, Filer, and Soda Springs for two-rowed types). In
addition, our program also has 96 winter lines being evaluated as Pat Hayes has
chosen to allot his portion of the breeding lines to examine our winter breeding lines.
Future Program Direction:
We envision that our program will continue to expand as far as the number of
populations and derived lines evaluated with a very large expansion first beginning in
2008 as we go from 12,000 to over 20,000 lines being evaluated per year. We
anticipate that malting barley production will continue to grow in Idaho and Montana and
we plan to release cultivars to meet the market demand. A major source of new barley
could be winter types and we will have a full program in 2008-09. Our future allotment
of resources will continue to provide more resources for our winter program as it
continues to grow. Our breeding program will continue to focus primarily on malt types
versus feed types because malting barley is critical to Idaho and Montana growers.
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