Everything You Wanted to Know About Barley,

But Were Afraid to Ask

P. Stephen Baenziger, Dipak Santra, Guorong Zhang, Do Mornhinweg,

And Graduate Students

University of Nebraska,, Kansas State University, USDA-ARS

Topics

• Take home points—What you need to know

• Where did barley originate

• Growing barley

• Breeding barley

What You Need to Know

• The major concern with barley is winterhardiness:• Winter oats < winter barley < winter triticale < winter

wheat < winter rye

• If barley survives the winter, it generally has few diseases (smut and BYDV are the exceptions).

• Barley must be harvested on time. It puts all of its resources into the grain and not the stem. Hence head breakage and lodging are always a concern.

• You have a choice of growing spring or winter barley. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

What You Need to Know

• The market for barley includes forage/cover crop, feed grain, malting barley, and hullessbarley (food use but not used for malting).

• The most valuable market is malting barley, but if you do not meet specifications, you have other markets. Remember malt is used for more than beer.

• As a brewer/malster, you have to watch for Fusarium head blight (scab) with it mycotoxin.

Benefits of Winter Barley in the Great Plains

• Has known markets.

• No new equipment is needed if you plant small grains.

• Barley is very drought tolerant and tends to be earlier than wheat or triticale.

• Barley as a rotational crop helps with disease suppression.

• Barley is immune to Karnal bunt, a wheat disease in Mexico.

• Future uses include hydroponic barley growing where the cattle eat the roots as well as the stems and leaves.

• Ethanol?

XX

BB AA CC DD HH RR

AABB CCDD

AABBDD AABBRR

Durum

Wheat

Bread Wheat Triticale

Jointed Goatgrass

Barley

11 MYA

Rye

7 MYA

Origin of Cultivated Barley:

500,000 YA

2.5-4.5 MYA1 MYA

8000 YA 130 YA

35 MYA

Pooideae

60 MYA

Wild Wheat and Oats in the Middle East, Wild Barley is hiding.

Wild Wheat: Triticum dicoccoides

Wild Oats

Crusader Castle: Croc de Chevaliers

Richard the Lionhearted stayed here.

Wild barley

Winter vs. Spring Barley

• Winter barley: Planted in September, harvested in late June/early July. Concerns: Winter survival, lodging, possibly scab. It is an unforgiving crop—plant on time. European malting barleys are winter types.

• Spring barley: Planted as soon as you can in the spring (often February or March on), harvested in late July/early August. Concerns: Planting on time due to wet springs/melting snow, lodging, heat stress=shriveled seed, possibly scab. Most previous U.S. malting barley breeding was done in spring barley regions.

• Most wild barleys were spring or facultative types. Winter barley is rarer.

Winter Barley:

• Has the winterhardiness to survive most Nebraska winters.It is a Lazarus crop—will scare you, but it grows from the crown. All the above ground leaves will be killed and many may be blown off, looking like an unplanted field.

• Climate change may be bringing this crop back to the Great Plains.

• Elongates rapidly and is winterkilled by late freezes (Nebraska, not further south).

• Need germplasm that does not elongate too soon. May be more related to photoperiod sensitivity than vernalization.

Where are Small Grains Grown?GxE

Selection for Winter Survival: Mead, NE. If it survives there, it will survive anywhere in the Great Plains.

MaltingBarley

Trial

BCAP

UNLWinterBarley

Winter Survival:• Cold temperatures that cause ice crystal punctures in

the cell.

• Heaving due to freezing and thawing (mainly in the east).

• Desiccation winter kill—basically freeze drying (believed to be major cause of damage to small grains in Nebraska).

• Breaking dormancy too early and being killed by a later freeze. The barley does not die in January or February, but is killed in March or April.

Vernalization vs. Photoperiod Sensitivity• Dictoo and NB3437 both were winterhardy, but

both were polymorphic for low (short) and high (long) vernalization types.

• The same was true for Centurk and Siouxlandwheat.

• Assumed the winter has ample time for vernalization, vernalization is somewhat separate from winter survival, and that vernalization does not control breaking dormancy.

Barley at Lincoln 2017

Barley

Barley at Lincoln, 2017

The Importance of Vernalization:

Role of Climate:• We are getting warmer in

the short term.

• May explain the reduced risk of growing and the better grain yield of barley.

• Barley is more drought tolerant than wheat, but of course this may change.

Winter Barley in the Great Plains

• Currently there are two winter barley breeding programs left (NE and USDA-ARS emphasizing insect resistance) and one interested scientist in KS (helps immensely with testing). TX was the most recent program to close and they recently submitted their germplasm to the World Collection.

• An orderly phase out of breeding programs is critical.

COLBY

STILLWATER

Role of Policy:• Dairies are moving out of western U.S. to the more

animal friendly Great Plains. Dairies like forage barley for feeding young calves.

• The current farm program insures barley--a recent addition. The barley insurance programs, due to recent good yields in the Great Plains, assumes very high yields compared to declining wheat yields under the drought. Crop insurance is critical for new crops and for those willing to try them.

• Parts of the Great Plains are malt and feed grain deficient.

Great Plains Barley in the ‘Overall Scheme of Things’

• A unique set of testing environments.

• A unique market.

• An important source of diverse germplasm that has very high levels of winterhardiness.

• Nebraska and USDA-ARS are the last public breeding programs in the Great Plains

• We are a key link/shield between Mexico and the spring barley region (e.g. Puccinia pathway).

2-row malting Hooded forage 6-row feed

The Types of Barley

Introduce Variation

Segregation and Selection

Evaluation and Release

Traditional Winter Cereal Breeding

Year 1 and 2

Year 3 to 6

Year 7 and 12

Barley Cross

Barley Headrow Harvest

Barley Yield Trials at Sidney

Barley Wheat

Barley Trials at Mead, NE.

Barley Grain Yield 2016-2018Grain Yield Grain Yield Grain Yield Grain Yield Grain Yield Flowering Height Test

lbs/a lbs/a lbs/a lbs/a lbs/a Date Weight

Name COLBY Mead Lincoln Sidney Average Rank Julian (in) lbs/bu

NB15420 4231 4659 4928 3396 4304 1 130.6 26.7 47.2

NB15415 4236 4476 4700 3649 4265 2 131.2 27.1 49.0

NB15441 4053 4832 4342 3692 4230 3 131.2 27.1 47.3

NB11414 4076 4340 4456 3945 4204 4 132.6 26.0 45.1

NB14422 3981 3830 4975 3893 4169 5 133.0 24.5 45.0

NB15417 3961 4451 4672 3488 4143 6 131.0 27.3 46.1

NB12434 4284 4426 4411 3252 4093 7 131.7 26.2 48.4

NB15442 3925 4112 4600 3603 4060 8 132.2 26.2 46.1

NB12437 4359 4143 3972 3341 3954 9 134.3 26.6 45.2

NB15419 3955 4525 4122 3166 3942 10 132.6 27.4 45.4

NB10444 4214 3859 3902 3602 3894 11 133.4 28.0 44.2

NB14405 4142 3599 4019 3803 3891 12 134.8 29.7 45.8

NB14404 3747 4356 4580 2766 3862 13 131.2 26.3 45.8

P-845 3813 3489 4528 3304 3783 14 131.0 26.2 45.2

NB14428 3955 3856 4241 2972 3756 15 132.7 25.5 45.4

NB14430 3721 4354 4204 2542 3705 16 131.7 25.1 48.0

P-954 4056 3572 3715 2912 3564 17 133.2 26.6 47.1

Average 4041 4169 4374 3372 3989 132.3 26.6 46.2

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Charles Eliot

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