Barley Production and Breeding in Europe: Modern Cultivars Combine Disease Resistance, Malting Quality and High Yield

Abstract

Barley is still one of the major agricultural crops in Europe although cultivation area and grain production are obviously declining. While winter barley is clearly outyielding spring barley, the latter is generally characterised by superior malting and brewing quality. Nonetheless, the use of winter barley is continuously replacing spring barley not only as animal feed but also for malt production. In major barley-growing countries like Germany, grain yield of classical winter barley cultivars, i.e. line varieties, has been increased by ca. 70 kg ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ in the last decades. The implementation of “haploidy steps” and use of doubled haploids in line breeding have caused an acceleration of breeding progress. More recently, the application of marker-assisted selection allowed an efficient combination of effective genes or loci (pyramiding) for enhancing resistance against fungal and viral diseases and improving product quality. Today, the development of a suitable hybrid system has formed the basis for an exploitation of heterosis in barley via hybrid breeding. New hybrid varieties tend to have in general a higher yield potential than line varieties. On this basis, it is feasible to enhance the performance of barley and to improve its competitiveness with other major crops such as wheat, maize or oilseed rape.