Environmental Association Identifies Candidates for Tolerance to Low Temperature and Drought.

Barley ( ssp. ) is cultivated from the equator to the Arctic Circle. The wild progenitor species, , occupies a relatively narrow latitudinal range (∼30 - 40° N) primarily at low elevation (< 1,500 m).

Development of a Multiparent Population for Genetic Mapping and Allele Discovery in Six-Row Barley.

Germplasm collections hold valuable allelic diversity for crop improvement and genetic mapping of complex traits. To gain access to the genetic diversity within the USDA National Small Grain Collection (NSGC), we developed the Barley Recombinant Inbred Diverse Germplasm Population (BRIDG6), a six-row spring barley multiparent population (MPP) with 88 cultivated accessions crossed to a common parent (Rasmusson). The parents were randomly selected from a core subset of the NSGC that represents the genetic diversity of landrace and breeding accessions.

The Effects of Both Recent and Long-Term Selection and Genetic Drift Are Readily Evident in North American Barley Breeding Populations.

Barley was introduced to North America ∼400 yr ago but adaptation to modern production environments is more recent. Comparisons of allele frequencies among growth habits and spike (inflorescence) types in North America indicate that significant genetic differentiation has accumulated in a relatively short evolutionary time span. Allele frequency differentiation is greatest among barley with two-row vs.

Barley landraces are characterized by geographically heterogeneous genomic origins.

Background: The genetic provenance of domesticated plants and the routes along which they were disseminated in prehistory have been a long-standing source of debate. Much of this debate has focused on identifying centers of origins for individual crops. However, many important crops show clear genetic signatures of multiple domestications, inconsistent with geographically circumscribed centers of origin.