Using some MAGIC to improve winter barley survival
Dr. Brian Steffenson, Professor and Lieberman-Okinow Endowed Chair of Cereal Disease Resistance at the University of Minnesota, is entering his 36th year of funding support from the American Malting Barley Association. As a plant pathologist, his main research interests include disease resistance in cereal crops, genetic diversity in the wild crop progenitors, host-parasite genetics, and virulence/molecular diversity in plant pathogenic fungi. His willingness to tap into landrace and wild barley (Hordeum vulgare subsp. spontaneum) collections to unlock sources of genetic improvement has made him a prolific collaborator internationally in the barley research community. Recently, he has also set his sights on improving winter hardiness of barley, especially for regions like the Upper Midwest, which holds great potential for fall sown crops. His colleague, Dr. Kevin Smith, barley breeder at the University of Minnesota, has spent the past decade developing improved malting barley varieties with the emerging interest of low temperature tolerance (LTT). Their collaboration is sparking some magic in the barley world.
One strategy deployed to advance this work is to leverage multi-parent populations that are produced by crossing more than two inbred founder lines, therefore, increasing genetic and phenotypic diversity in the developed progeny lines. This crossing scheme generates what is referred to as a Multi-parent Advanced Generation Inter-Cross (MAGIC) population, which in their case included the intermating of eight founder parents. MAGIC population design is considered a powerful approach to combine genetic diversity and dissect the genetic architecture of many important traits.
LTT, an important component of overall winter survival, is becoming a major trait for many barley breeding programs seeking the development of fall-sown barley varieties. Increasing competition from other crops, a warming climate, and the environmental benefits brought by winter barley has spurred this interest. Through extensive evaluations for LTT of several diverse barley landrace panels, and collaboration with several U.S. and international breeding programs, the eight MAGIC founder parents were identified.
These selected parents complement each other and cover most of the spectrum of known genes associated with winter survival in barley. Four of the parents are two-row and four are six-row. Four parents in the set have excellent malting quality, whereas the other 4 have unknown quality. Intermating of parents through several rounds of crossing events followed by selfing for several generations, resulted in the development of 700 recombinant inbred lines. These MAGIC lines were evaluated for winter survival in seven trials in six states, including Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio, and New York in 2023-24. The results were encouraging as a number of lines had high levels of winter survival rates across all locations. The MAGIC population will be evaluated again in the 2024-25 season to validate genes for winter survival and develop molecular markers for them. The ultimate goal is to use the most winter hardy MAGIC lines for development of winter barley varieties with acceptable malting qualities. Perhaps with a MAGIC key, the winter survival trait will be unlocked, and winter barley will find favor even in the great north!
You can check out Brian and Kevin’s research and more at the upcoming BarleyU day on the St. Paul, Minnesota campus July 9th from 1-5 pm CT.
Photo credit:
Sallam AH, Smith KP, Hu G, Sherman J, Baenziger PS, Wiersma J, Duley C, Stockinger EJ, Sorrells ME, Szinyei T, Loskutov IG, Kovaleva ON, Eberly J and Steffenson BJ (2021) Cold Conditioned: Discovery of Novel Alleles for Low- Temperature Tolerance in the Vavilov Barley Collection. Front. Plant Sci. 12:800284.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.800284
FIGURE 1| View of the winter hardiness trial planted on the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota in 2020–21. The VIR-LTT78 panel is demarcated by the orange line with most accessions exhibiting a very high level of winter survival. In the foreground, the standard control lines of Norstar (winter type wheat), Rymin (winter type rye), Maja (winter type barley), Charles (winter type barley), Dicktoo (facultative type barley), and McGregor (winter type barley) also exhibited a high level of winter survival, whereas Stander (spring type barley) died out completely.
