Drought presents scientists with another challenge

Comment Brian Henderson

The continuing dry weather has come as a bit of a surprise to malting barley growers in many parts of the country.

But the contentment generated by getting the crop sown in dry conditions has been giving way to unease. For in an almost unique set of circumstances for Scotland, denied the soft kiss of rain, crops have been struggling to get established and to access the fertiliser required to produce a decent crop.

In some parts, growers have even gone as far as to set up irrigation equipment normally only used for potato and vegetable crops to encourage their barley to get a move on.

But the crop has also received a surprising amount of attention from scientists in recent weeks. The publication of a new, higher definition map of the barley genome was only one of a number of advances announced which should help breeders come up with new varieties.

Just last week, workers at the James Hutton Institute pinned down some of the genetic secrets behind the huge success of that old favourite of malting barley growers, Golden Promise.

It might make some readers feel their age to realise that next year will be the 50th anniversary of this variety’s first appearance on what was then the East of Scotland Agricultural College recommended list.

The variety was probably the first to offer growers in Scotland the cherished combination of short straw length, high yields and early maturity which made it the variety of choice for anyone

0 The dry weather is worrying many barley growers growing malting barley this side of the Border from the late Sixties to the Eighties.

The gene responsible for these favourable traits had remained elusive until scientists at the Hutton – working in collaboration with the Carlsberg Research Laboratory – managed to shed further light on the genetic make-up of this variety which could quite fairly be described as “probably the best malting barley in the world”.

For Father assures me it always yielded a good two-and-a-half tons to the acre and, if treated with the right seed dressing, needed little fungicide – meaning that after a squirt of herbicide the field gate was closed until harvest time.

Even allowing for rosetinted spectacles, there is no getting away from Golden Promise’s 20-year dominance – or the fact that it has maintained its grasp on some distilleries and is now sought after once again by the booming craft brewing industry.

One of the key workers on the Hutton project, Bill Thomas, told me that understanding the function of the mutation in Golden Promise that gave it the favourable traits could be a major boost towards breeding similar characteristics into new varieties.

And while the short, stiff straw would be welcome, there’s a growing realisation that the constant pressure for increased yield in recent decades has led to varieties becoming later and later maturing – so some earlier ripening genes would be a boon too.

Although no quick fix is likely, markers identifying the genes for the desired traits could make selecting likely winners from the offspring produced by conventional breeding technologies considerably quicker.

But while none of the tricks of genetic modification – widely distrusted by the public today – are required to harness the new findings, the variety highlights the different attitudes that prevailed in the Sixties.

For, as most will know, Golden Promise’s other claim to fame is its origins after exposure to the sort of ionising radiation you would normally want to keep separated from your own germ plasm by at least ten feet of lead-reinforced concrete.

The mutations caused as a result of the deliberate exposure of the parent variety, Maythorpe, to gamma rays were then grown on – and the hopeful monsters displaying the best characteristics were selected.

While the approach might be viewed as a dangerous blunderbuss when compared with the surgical precision of today’s gene-splicing techniques, when it hit lucky no one seemed to mind its X-men genesis.

Now if only they could come up with something flexible enough to thrive in both the extremes of our normally rain-soaked fields and this drought...