Identification of genes in a collection of historic barley mutants

Mats Hansson

** Department of Biology, Lund University, Sölvegatan 35B, 22362 Lund, Sweden.

mats.hansson@biol.lu.se

Abstract

Food production is globally under constant pressure facing an increasing human population under changing climate conditions. At the same time, the agricultural land is desired for energy production and production of biomass. Plant breeding needs to be done in order to meet the demands. The use of GMO plants could help but regardless they will be legal to use or not, GMO plants will never play an important role as long as they are not accepted by the consumers. In the meantime, traditional mutants induced by eg. X-ray and chemicals have to be explored. The collection of induced barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) mutants at NordGen (the Nordic Genetic Resource Center) is one of the largest in the world and a truly unique resource for researchers and breeders who are searching genetic diversity. Several allelic mutants have been kept for each mutant locus, which is important for identification of the mutated genes as well as for downstream characterization of the gene and its use in plant breeding. Several genes have been identified related to culm length, spike morphology, timing of flowering and chlorophyll biosynthesis. A few examples will be given.

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Key words: barley, mutant, gene identification, plant architecture, early flowering, chlorophyll biosynthesis