US: Scientists tap into barley time machine to help adapt the grain to climate change

Barley is grown globally: from Asia to Egypt to Norway and the Andes in South America. It’s been one of the most important cereal crops for at least 12,000 years. As it has spread across the globe, random changes to its DNA has allowed it to thrive in each new location. But – as with many grains – the genetic diversity of barley has been narrowed severely over decades and the grain is now susceptible to climate change. As the threat of climate change grows ever stronger, researchers are now trying to identify the barley genes that have changed to predict which varieties will grow well in places that now suffer from hotter temperatures, longer droughts and more severe storms. In 1929, the Barley Composite Cross II experiment was founded in order to discover new barley varieties for the California market. It’s now one of the world’s oldest biological experiments. Breeders competed thousands of genetically distinct types of barley against one another across several decades. The ...