Summer update July 2024 – 1.5 years of hard work and great collaboration
We are thrilled to witness how BarleyMicroBreed is progressing and to see the first results emerging from the impressive efforts of all partners involved in the Correlation Phase of the project.
We are well into the second field trial season, and once again the teams at ICARDA and BOKU are producing overwhelming amounts of phenotypic data of the 568 barley cultivars in the field trials in Lebanon, Morocco and Austria.
In the effort to get the best possible data on the roots BOKU has developed the The Dynamic Dark Root Chamber, which captures detailed root images without disturbing the plants. By using infrared technology, the chamber allows researchers to continuously monitor root growth in darkness and soil conditions, mimicking natural environments. Read more about this imaging system here.
University of Copenhagen and Eurofins are close to finishing the sequencing and annotation of whole genomes of 50 of our barley cultivars – next challenge will be to link genomic variation to microbiomes and phenotypic traits, notably drought resilience – yet another slightly daunting and very exciting task!
The teams at Aarhus University and Eurofins are close to finalizing the profiling of almost 11,000 root microbiomes from the field trials – we learned the hard way that the freeze-drying, sorting, grinding, DNA extraction, amplification and sequencing of such a number of environmental samples takes time and many hands!
All the more exciting to see the first output of the analyses that shows barley genotypes as a very strong driver of root microbiome composition. We look forward to giving more updates as we generate more results from this wealth of data.
BarleyMicroBreed and its “sister project” Root2Res (https://root2res.eu/) have established close ties. Working groups with representatives from both projects focusing on barley genomics, microbiomes and phenotyping are meeting regularly to share ideas, methodological experiences and to develop collaboration. In February, the two projects gave a joint workshop on root phenotyping in Morocco. A warm thanks from all BarleyMicroBreeders to everybody in Root2Res for the inspiring collaboration!
All individuals and partners involved in BarleyMicroBreed have proven to be incredibly competent and committed to the project, and it was a pleasure to meet everybody in real life at our annual meeting in February in Morocco – a big thanks to ICARDA for hosting a great meeting.
And thanks to everybody involved in the project – your enthusiasm and dedication are paramount for fulfilling the project’s ambitions. We look forward to meeting you all again next year in Vienna!
The AU coordinating team