BARLEY-RESILIENCE – utilizing wild barley genes in breeding, which increase drought resilience, and characterizing their molecular function.

Drought stress is a major constrain in plant cultivation. Within the previous EU-project BRACE, we located wild barley genes, which supported resilience against drought in multi-location field trials in Germany, Morocco and Turkey. In BARLEY-RESILIENCE we will validate drought resilience of wild barleys, found in the BRACE project, and characterize their genetic effects. For this, high-throughput examination of root and stem traits, transcriptome and methylome sequencing and testing of CRISPR knock-out lines will be conducted. The 4 objectives of the project are:

(1) Study drought stress resilience of selected barley lines in IPK’s High-throughput phenotyping platform (HTPP).
(2) Study epigenetic imprinting and transcript expression of the selected barley lines.
(3) Produce and study CRISPR knock out lines of candidate genes involved in drought stress tolerance.
(4) Study drought stress resilience of barley lines in multi-location field trials in Germany, Morocco and Turkey.

The defined objectives will be achieved with a team in Halle, made of Prof. Pillen, Dr. Andreas Maurer, Dr. Thomas Schmutzer and a PhD student, and in collaboration with external partners indicated below.