ERANET - SusCrop - BARISTA

The EU produces ~40% of the world's barley (~60 MT/year). The farming and industrial sector relying on that is at risk from climate change, disease shifts, future resource limitations, but must increase yield to match demand and meet SDGs. Improving the genetic potential of the seed through breeding is the most efficient and sustainable way to reach these goals. The development of novel cultivars carrying sustainability-related traits, which include resistance to pathogens, increased nutrient and water use efficiency, adaptation to elevated CO2, and a plant life-cycle resilient to future climatic conditions, will be based on identification, understanding, and use of genetic variation, complemented by new insights from modelling. The development of germplasm, strategies, and toolkits to efficiently incorporate sustainability-related traits into new cultivars are key components of a secure future agriculture. BARISTA focuses on the traits relevant for sustainable barley production and resilience under current and future environmental challenges: water use efficiency; response to water scarcity or waterlogging; resistance to biotrophic and necrotrophic pathogens; phenological adaptation and regulation of flowering time; culm architecture and lodging resistance; response to increased levels of atmospheric CO2, response to reduced nitrogen fertilizer input. The project aims at identifying the physiological and genetic bases of these traits by making the best use of extensive phenotypic and genotypic data already available or collected here. Application of these findings will be driven by modelling tools including genomic prediction (GP), crop simulation models (CSMs) and integrated GP-CSM strategies through the improvement of current predictive breeding tools for barley, providing breeders with an innovative and efficient toolkit to increase the sustainability and resilience of barley in the face of biotic and abiotic challenges of climate change to help meet the SDGs.