April 14, 2021: Webinar on Naked Barley Breeding

The webinar recording and slides will be available at https://eorganic.org/node/34624

Barley, one of the first domesticated agricultural plants, is a versatile crop that has three main end uses: malt food and feed. Interest in consumption of organic barley for these end uses have increased in recent years, and organic prices can fetch a significant premium to justify integrating organic barley into an organic farmer’s profile. Naked barley, a type of barley where the hull falls off the grain at harvest, has significant advantages over “hulled” due to better test weight and processing as a whole grain, particularly for food consumption. However, there many traits of barley in organic environments that have not been considered because most barley has been selected for malting quality in conventional environments. Here, we will be presenting research progress made on the Multi-use Organic Naked Barley project with the aim to develop methods to evaluate and select multi-use naked barley lines in organic environments. We have evaluated both winter and spring variety trials across the United States at research universities located in New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Oregon and California. The goal of the webinar is to present some of our research and trial findings as well as some practical experience learned from growing organic naked barley for this project. Additionally,we will discuss utilizing aerial imaging technology to measure components of weed competitive ability in organic spring barley.

Karl Kunze is a graduate student in the School of Integrative Plant Science Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, and works in Mark Sorrell's lab.