Investment

High winter rainfall, combined with poor soil structure regularly causes severe waterlogging damage to crop growth, whereby winter waterlogging becomes the main limitation to grain production, particularly in the high rainfall zone of south eastern Australia. Compared to wheat, barley is more susceptible to waterlogging. The most economical way of reducing the damage caused by waterlogging is to introduce waterlogging tolerance into current barley varieties. To achieve this target, both sources of tolerance and a reliable trait evaluation method are crucial. The understanding of the genetic behaviour of waterlogging tolerance is also needed to make the selection more efficient within breeding programs.

This project will generate near-isogenic lines for:

1. further fine mapping of the genes for waterlogging tolerance originated from the wild barley and identifying better markers for breeders;
2. conducting field validation trials to demonstrate that the wild trait provides effective waterlogging tolerance without deleteriously impacting yield performance;
3. quantifying waterlogging tolerance benefits to introgressed lines and their non-waterlogging field performance (i.e. yield drag); and
4. any effect of the waterlogging gene on micro-malting performance of the introgressed lines.