The area of barley seeded in Alberta in 1995 was about 2,084,000 million ha (5,150,000 acres), according to Statistics Canada. This was 45% of the country's barley and 48% of the barley in western Canada. Estimated mean yield for Alberta was 3331 kg/ha (61.9 bu./acre), somewhat above the Canadian average of 2986 kg/ha, and up from the 1994 mean yield in Alberta of 2970 kg/ha. For comparison, areas seeded to the other major field crops in Alberta were, spring wheat (except durum) 2,430,000 ha, canola 1,800,000 ha, oats 486,000, durum wheat 304,000 ha, rye 40,000 ha, flax 36,000 ha, and winter wheat 30,000 ha.

Dr. Peter Burnett has obtained the position of Assistant Director at the Lethbridge Research Centre of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Lethbridge, Alberta.

Proceedings are now available for the First Canada-USA Feed Grain Quality Conference, held in Calgary, Alberta, March 1-3, 1995. Please request the proceedings from the Field Crop Development Centre.

The newest barley from this program, Kasota, was registered for sale in Canada in 1995.

It is an early maturing, hulled, six-row, semi-dwarf, feed barley. It is from the CIMMYT cross, Celaya//Mezquite/Godiva/3/Trompillo, and was released to SeCan Association.

Good field scald ratings were obtained in 1995 on breeding material at two of our testing sites, Calmar and Stettler, and in scald inoculated nurseries at Lacombe and Edmonton.

We used the aqueous air brush method again in 1995 to inoculate progeny of some key crosses with loose smut, and have done some further experimentation on methods of inoculation. This work is concentrated on incorporation of the gene Run8 into breeding material.

To incorporate post-harvest dormancy into hulless barleys, several years ago, Dr. Don Salmon crossed two- and six-row hulless barleys with the semi-dwarf cultivar, Samson, which has this characteristic. Some of the hulless progeny of these crosses are showing strong dormancy, both from the hulls and in the hulless seed. The hulless six-row cultivar, Falcon, which is in one of the crosses, and which is not closely related to Samson, also has some post harvest dormancy. Germination of hand threshed hulless seed indicates that good dormancy is available in lines with very light colored seed. Therefore it appears possible to develop hulless cultivars with seed of this color while maintaining good levels of dormancy.
 
 

Four central Alberta sites of the Hulless Cooperative Registration Test were analysed for lack of clean thresh-out of the kernels, that is, the percent of the kernels that did not lose their hulls during the threshing process. The test had 19 hulless entries, including three checks. Some entries were two- and some six-rowed. The variation among the entries for cleanness of thresh was highly significant, largely due to two that were markedly inferior to many of the others in this characteristic. The site means for thresh-out were also quite different from each other. Hulled seed off the combine, before further cleaning of the samples, ranged from 10% from the best site to 32% from the worst. At this latter site, two of the entries had over 50% hulled seed. The covered, or hull-surrounded seeds, when dehulled, were consistently smaller than the clean-threshed ones. The site means for percent hull, on a seed basis, were high, ranging from 15 to 20%.

Table 1. Characteristics of hulless and hulled seeds in threshed samples for four central

Alberta sites of the 1995 Hulless Cooperative Registraon Test.

Charateristics	Site 1	Site 2	Site 3	Site 4
Mean percent hulled seed in sample	10	16	20	32
Mean groat weight of hulled seed (mg)	30.1	23.4	30.0	25.7
Mean weight of hulless seed (mg)	39.6	36.3	37.7	37.4
Weight of hulled groat / hulless (%)	76	64	80	69
Weight of hulls of hulled seed (%)	19	18	15	20

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The testing of barleys for forage production has continued. Some of the semi-dwarfs have good forage yield, but not Kasota, which has a high harvest index and is early maturing. The late maturing, moderately tall and scald resistant two-row, Seebe, has good forage yield. Forage potential of spring planted winter cereals, under-seeded to spring cereals, was again demonstrated. A paper has recently been published on this by Pat Jedel and Don Salmon in the Agronomy Journal.

A paper published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Science by Pat Jedel & Jim Helm on effects of seeding rate of spring barley, demonstrated that only the lowest tested rate, 50 kgha^-1, caused a significant loss of yield. The highest rate used was 130 kg ha^-1. Both two- and six-row barleys were tested. Seeding rates of 75 to 100 kg ha^-1 optimized kernel and test weights for the malt variety, Harrington.

Dr. Pat Jedel has provided Alberta data on five cultivars of barley to be used in the SPARC - Barley Crop Model, being developed by Dr. Y. Jame, at AAFC, Swift Current, Saskatchewan. These data determine genetic coefficients that run the model.

A project of nearly 30 years duration on the development of multiple dominant and recessive genetic marker stocks is nearing completion. Selected multiple gene stocks from this material will be made available for use as tools in genetic research. A multiple dominant and a multiple recessive doubled haploid line have been produced and crossed. About 100 doubled haploid progeny have been created by cooperating researchers. These lines, because of the large number of clearly visible segregating genes, can be used in teaching genetics.

The results of several years of cooperative research between Dr. Karen Bailey and Dr. Bob Wolfe on the influence of common root rot on plot yields of barley have been published in the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology. In the cross used, moderately infected lines averaged higher in yield than the most resistant ones. However, highly infected lines were the lowest yielding.

K. Xi is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Peter Burnett's laboratory at the Lacombe Research Centre, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, working on histo-pathology of scald of barley and yield losses to scald and net blotch.

A report by K. Xi and P.A. Burnett entitled 'A simplified method for staining paraffin-imbedded sections of scald of barley caused by Rhynchosporium secalis is published in this volume of the Barley Newsletter.

A study has been conducted to determine the resistance mechanism in barley to infection by R. secalis. A significant negative correlation has been found between percentage apposition formation and percentage penetration. The higher frequency of apposition formation in resistant cultivars is considered to be the primary mechanism of resistance.

Field trials were carried out in 1995 at the Lacombe Research Centre. Results showed that scald infection in 'fast scalding' cultivars resulted in significantly higher values for 'area under disease progress curve' (AUDPC) and caused yield reduction of 4-19%. In comparison 'slow scalding' cultivars had low levels of disease and yield reduction of 4-8%. Mixed field inoculation with Pyrenophora teres (net blotch) and R. secalis on cv. Harrington, resulted in significantly higher values for AUDPC and lower yield compared with either pathogen alone.