Annual Progress Report on Malting Barley Research March, 2002

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THE OREGON BARLEY IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM
Patrick Hayes
Dept. of Crop and Soil Science
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331
541-737-5878
patrick.m.hayes@orst.edu
Summary
The primary focus of the OSU breeding program, with AMBA funding, is malting quality
winter 6-row. A secondary focus is malting quality spring 6-row. We are attempting to
integrate the two efforts by developing facultative varieties that can be either fall or
spring sown. We have devoted considerable effort over the past ten years to transferring
quantitative resistance to stripe rust to our germplasm. We have incorporated stripe rust
resistance in all types of germplasm, both winter and spring and 2-row and 6-row, but
the focus of our mapping and molecular selection efforts has been spring 2-row.
<strong>Progress</strong> in all areas of endeavor is summarized in this report.
2001 was not a good year for Oregon barley production. Oregon barley acreage was
reduced by water disputes in the Klamath Basin. From a research perspective, however,
prospects are encouraging. We have three winter barley selections in the AMBA Pilot
program. STAB 113 is in a first year of testing; STAB 7 and 47 were advanced to a
second year; and STAB 7 is in accelerated increase for plant scale testing. We have
developed some promising 6-row spring malting germplasm. And, most encouraging, our
pyramids of stripe rust resistance genes are working. We have shown that quantitative
resistance to stripe rust can be mapped, introgressed, and transferred to elite agronomic
and malting quality backgrounds using molecular marker assisted selection.
Furthermore, these pyramids of resistance genes were resistant in the face of the reported
new virulence in Peru. Another encouraging development was the performance of
Recombinant Substitution Lines based on introgressing pieces of the Hordeum vulgare
subsp. spontaneum genome into Harrington.
Winter barley improvement
2001 was a dry year in much of the Pacific Northwest and yields were lower than usual
even at irrigated locations, such as Aberdeen. Agronomic data from trials at Pendleton
(dryland), Pullman (dryland) and Aberdeen are shown in Tables 1 – 4. The winter
malting selections are still not as high yielding as the winter feed varieties, but if
performance is compared to spring malting types at the same locations, the comparisons
are more favorable. Stripe rust resistance data are presented in Table 5. The field
epidemic intensities at Toluca and at Davis are high; accordingly, while we would like to
see lower levels of rust on some of these selections, the level of protection should be
sufficient for most production environments in the Pacific Northwest. These data support
the contention that seedling resistance is not necessarily a predictor of adult plant