• Introduction
• Background
• The team
• The barley collection
• Starch characterisation
• Gene discovery
• Fast-track barley breeding
• Our approach in wheat
• Contacts and funding

Fast-track barley breeding

There are several reasons for introducing our mutations into a UK commercial barley

• The original mutants are in very different, mostly non-UK (“exotic”) genetic backgrounds, making it difficult to compare the properties of the starches, and the effects of environment on those properties.
• Potential commercial users of new starches from barley want to know how they perform in a normal UK barley, not in an “exotic” variety.
• Several of the exotic varieties are not suitable for growth in UK field conditions
• The commercial lines containing our new starches can potentially be taken on by a commercial cereal breeder for further development at the end of the study. Commercial breeders would not be able to use the existing mutant collection .

Breeding at NIAB is introducing the mutations into the elite UK barley variety ‘Tipple’. True-breeding material will be ready for analysis after harvest in 2010. The scheme shows part of the breeding programme. At each stage we select for plants that have the mutation but have maximum amounts of Tipple DNA elsewhere in their genomes.

crossed to Tipple
F1 (heterozygote) back-crossed to Tipple
Offspring that carry the mutation further back-crossed Tipple genome
True-breeding material derived from selected BC2 progeny will be multiplied up through the glasshouse and field