Barley Responses and Adaptation to Changing Environments.

• Applicants: Dr. Kerstin Neumann; Professor Dr. Klaus Pillen; Professor Dr. Reimund P. Rötter
• Subject Area: Plant Breeding and Plant Pathology
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 459539744

Crop cultivation and yield is threatened by daily and seasonal fluctuations of the environment regarding water, temperature, light, and nutrient supply. In non-cultivated wild plants, e.g. wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum), maintaining reproductive fitness ensures population viability over time. The strategic challenge for plant breeders is to maximize yield while minimizing losses due to environmental fluctuations. Today, environmental stresses (e.g. water availability, temperature extremes, nitrogen shortage), exacerbated by climate change, are of increasing concern for sustainable crop production. In wild and cultivated barley, natural and human selection of beneficial pathways, genes, and alleles have allowed barley to adapt to a wide range of environments. While some genes and gene networks underpinning adaptive responses have been elucidated (e.g. flowering time), most remain poorly understood. Thanks to the recently achieved availability of high-quality full genome sequences and new genetic tools, stress response networks can now be clarified directly in crop species like barley, paving the link between stress response and agricultural yield. The BRACE consortium aims to resolve the components of abiotic stress responses and to identify genes and alleles needed for resilience, by using specialized populations of wild and cultivated barley as well as genotypes containing mutated candidate genes for stress resilience. The highly divergent wild x cultivated barley nested association mapping (NAM) population HEB-25, developed by partner MLU, contains genes and alleles needed for abiotic stress resilience, as shown in a total of 19 so far published reports. In BRACE we plan to test if particular wild barley alleles can be identified and selected to improve resilience to drought under test conditions as well as under field conditions and if these alleles can be successfully transferred to locally adapted elite barley cultivars. A set of 400 wild barley HEB lines will be deeply characterized on advanced environmental and phenotyping platforms that include gas-exchange chambers, high-throughput greenhouses, and multi-location experimental field trials. In a multi-disciplinary approach, responses to drought stress will be analyzed biochemically, physiologically, genetically, genomically, and through crop simulation modelling, with reference to gene function and allele diversity. Subsequently, information on pathways, allele diversity, crop simulation models and ideotype models will be integrated to reveal mechanisms and deliver genes and alleles from wild barley growth models and improved prediction models of barley performance cultivated under drought. Public and private breeding organizations, located in European and in neighboring barley cultivation areas (i.e. Turkey and North Africa), will co-exploit improved germplasm and the derived knowledge to develop cultivars better adapted to future climate conditions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Estonia, Finland, Lebanon, Turkey
• Partner Organisation: TÜBITAK The Scientific and Technology Research Council of Turkey
• Application Partner: Maa- ja metsätalousministeriö; Ministry of Rural Affairs of the Republic of Estonia
• Co-Investigators: Gennady Bracho Mujica, Ph.D.; Dr. Nicole Costa Resende; Dr. Andreas Maurer; Dr. Thomas Schmutzer
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Michael Baum; Professor Dr. Hannes Kollist; Professor Dr. Alan Schulman; Professor Dr. Hakan Özkan