Mapping Agronomic Performance in Malting Barley Using a Narrow Cross.

Six-rowed barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) malt is one of the raw materials used for the production of one of the most popular drinks consumed worldwide, beer. A challenge in developing new malting barley cultivars is ensuring that they have the agronomic performance wanted by producers and the malting and brewing quality desired by maltsters and brewers.  Mapping genes associated with agronomic performance has been done in many studies around the world; yet application of these results for successful marker assisted selection (MAS) by Midwest US malting barley programs has not been successful.  A possible reason for the non-success is that the mapping populations were comprised of parents with very diverse origins.  As part of a larger study to map loci controlling economically important traits in Midwest six-rowed malting barley, agronomic data on heading date, stem breakage, lodging, plant height, and yield were collected on 193 F₁-derived doubled-haploid lines from the cross between the six-rowed cultivars Robust and Stander.  These two cultivars are closely related but differ substantially in agronomic performance and malt quality.  As determined using 9,000 SNPs, the polymorphism rate between the two cultivars is around 6%. Agronomic data were collected on the mapping population and parents in replicated yield trials conducted at multiple locations in North Dakota in 2011-2013.  Data from these trials and the existing SNP map for the population will be used to identify loci associated with these traits.  Results from these analyses will be presented.