Annual Progress Report on Malting Barley Research March, 2002

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Tri-state Extension testing : Oregon - STAB 7, STAB 47, STAB 113, KAB 37; Idaho
Idaho - STAB 7, STAB 47, STAB 113
Upcoming Releases
• No winter varieties were proposed for release.
• We have planted Breeder’s Seed head rows of all selections the
AMBA Pilot program.
• One acre of STAB 7 will be increased in a spring seeding in cooperation with the
Washington Crop Improvement Association in order to have sufficient seed for a
plant scale test.
Variety performance updates
There was commercial production of Kold and Strider.
Spring Barley Improvement
6-row: The consensus of discussions with western spring 6-row malting barley users was
that the two most promising varieties for western production are Excel and Stander.
Drawbacks to these varieties, in western production, are thin seed and susceptibility to
stripe rust. Accordingly, we implemented a marker-assisted selection program to transfer
stripe rust resistance QTLs from the varieties Orca (2-row) and Tango (6-row). 1,200 F5
SSD lines were evaluated for stripe rust resistance in Mexico in the summer of 2001.
One hundred forty selections had rust severities < 20%. We proceeded with one cycle of
greenhouse seed increase and are currently genotyping these lines to determine their
stripe rust resistance allele architecture. The resistant lines are currently planted at Davis,
California and Ciudad Obregon, Mexico; we will proceed with F7 head row evaluations
at Tule Lake, California and (in a cooperative effort with BARI) at Fort Collins,
Colorado. We will confirm stripe rust resistance this summer at Toluca, Mexico.
Samples from agronomically promising lines at Tule Lake and Ciudad Obregon will be
submitted for malting quality assessment, laying the groundwork for improvement of
spring western 6-row. As mentioned in the preceding section on winter malting barley
improvement, we are hoping to integrate our 6-row malting barley efforts so the same
varieties will be suitable for fall and spring sowing.
2-row: The goal of our 2-row spring barley improvement efforts has been a public sector
variety better than Baronesse. Ideally, we would like a Baronesse with malting quality.
All of our spring barley improvement efforts have been conducted within a framework of
disease resistance. Broad-spectrum resistance to stripe rust, and other diseases, will be an
excellent insurance policy. These resistance genes will help to ensure the stability of
barley production by preventing expensive and unpleasant surprises. Our strategy for
spring 2-row improvement has been to pyramid resistance QTLs using marker-assisted
selection. These efforts have paid off. As shown in Table 9, genotypes with multiple
resistance QTL alleles have lower levels of stripe rust than lines with one or no QTL.
Some of these resistance gene pyramid selections were also resistant to the reported new
virulence detected at Huancayo, Peru in 2001 (Table 8). We are confirming these
preliminary data with more extensive tests in Ecuador and Peru.