Thanks to an experiment started before the Great Depression, researchers have pinpointed the genes behind the remarkable adaptability of barley, a key ingredient in beer and whiskey. These insights could ensure the crop’s continued survival amidst rapid climate change. Grown everywhere from Asia and Egypt to Norway and the Andes mountains of South America, barley is one of the world’s most important cereal crops and has been for at least 12,000 years. As it has spread across the globe, random changes to its DNA allowed it to survive in each new location. It is critical to identify the genes that changed to predict which varieties will thrive in places now struggling with increasingly hotter temperatures, longer stretches of drought , and more dramatic storms. “Breeders have long understood the need to develop crops that were well tuned to their local environment. So, a century ago, they started this experiment in Davis, California with barley varieties from all over the world with the goal of identifying locally adapted varieties,” says Dan Koenig, a University of California, Riverside geneticist. “The scientists who started the experiment didn’t have the ability to pinpoint which genes make barley successful and high yielding in a particular environment, but we can now study tens of millions of genetic changes in a single experiment in my laboratory,” Koenig says. Dozens of genes that contribute to barley’s adaptability are described in a new study appearing in the journal Science . Koenig, who is corresponding author of the study, explains that some of the genes they identified help barley time its reproductive processes to the most optimal parts of the breeding season. “Flowering either too early or too late means the plant won’t be able to produce seeds,” says Koenig. “For crops to produce the maximum amount of seed, […]