Access to Nordic Barley Genetic resources

 

Louise Bondo and Dr. Oscar Díaz

Section Leaders for Agricultural Crops

Nordic Gene Bank

P O Box 41

SE-230 53 ALNARP

 

The Nordic Gene Bank (NGB) is a join Nordic institute organized under the Nordic Council of

Ministers and includes Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The mandate of NGB is to conserve and document plant material of value for agriculture and horticulture from the Nordic region. NGB represents furthermore a platform for collaboration on plant genetic resources between the Nordic countries and the adjacent areas. The NGB promotes strategic and applied research projects on the mandate species that are of principal importance for conservation and use in the Nordic countries.

 

The total collection of Hordeum at the NGB consists of 45 species, 473 cultivars, and 12827 accessions. The accepted part of the ordinary Hordeum vulgare ssp. vulgare collection preserved at the NGB for long-term preservation is presented in the table below. The collection consists of about 600 accessions. Table 1 show that the number of accepted Nordic cultivars is about 288 and the number of accepted Nordic landraces is about 76. The collection also includes accepted breeding- and research material.

 

Table 1. Number of accepted accessions in the ordinary barley collection at NGB

Country of origin	Cultivars	Landraces	Total
Denmark	81	8	158
Finland	34	46	118
Faroe Island	0	1	1
Iceland	2	0	2
Norway	36	10	52
Sweden	135	11	276
Total	288	76	605

 

The ordinary barley collection has been evaluated for malting quality and resistance to Rhynchosporium, scald, powdery mildew and other agronomic traits. All results can be found in the NGB database at the following address (http://www.ngb.se/sesto). This Hordeum material has been used in breeding programmes world wide.

 

The Nordic barley collection is unique in the world. For instance, Iceland, Faroe Island and other areas far north are the only locations in the world where barley can be grown at this latitude. The Nordic barley varieties have been specially developed to stand Nordic climate conditions, such as cold, long and humid summer period.

 

In addition, the NGB stores other collections from the genus Hordeum, denominated “sub collections”. The material from the special collections has been used in phylogenetic studies and also in pre-breeding programmes. These are:

 

The Barley Mutant Collection, with about 10000 accessions, is a result from a joint Scandinavian mutation research programme. It is mainly developed from a cooperation project between the Swedish Seed Association (later Svalöf AB), Svalöv, and the Institute for Genetics at Lund University. The project was initiated already in 1928. Several spring barley cultivars have been used for the induction of mutant genes and researchers have explored different methods, variation and the broad diversity in barley.

 

The Nordic Gene Bank preserves about 700 translocation and duplication lines of Barley, developed by Professor Arne Hagberg at the Swedish Seed Association. Translocation lines are the basic material in the production of duplications and duplicated segments, mainly translocations involving chromosomes carrying a satellite (chromosomes 6 and 7). The collections are of large importance and valuable for several reasons, e.g. the rearrangement of the chromosome structures can be used for further chromosome manipulation and as a tool to map molecular markers.

 

 

The collection of chlorophyll mutants from Carlsberg Laboratory. There are 357 different chlorophyll mutant lines in the collection. The mutants have been developed within the Swedish mutation research programme at the Swedish Seed Association in Svalöv. Some lines were developed by Professor H. Nilsson-Ehle already in the 1920s. The research has been carried out by Professor Dieter von Wettstein at the Carlsberg Research Laboratory where he identified 105 different gene loci in these mutants.

 

The Åberg collection. During the years 1953-1955, Dr. C. L. Behm collected material in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Tibet and Iran. The collection was in 1955 handed over to Professor Erik Åberg at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Professor Åberg donated the material to the Nordic Gene Bank. The Åberg collection consists of 53 barley seed accessions and about 1060 spike samples of Hordeum, Triticum and Avena. The material was collected in villages and local bazaars. The material is of significant historical value, probably of great diversity, and will most likely be of importance for future research. Some resistance to mildew is found in the collection.

 

The collection of Near Isogenic Lines was developed by Professor James Mac Keys at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala. In total, the collection consists of 400 lines, from which106 of these lines were backcrosses from Hordeum vulgare ssp vulgare “Ingrid”. Most of the lines have well described genes for resistance to Blumeria (syn. Erysiphe) graminis f.sp. hordei. Genes for vernalization and dwarfing has been localized in the collection.

 

The NGB distributes seeds and information of this material to all interested researchers and breeders free of charge.