Is A Bumper Crop Really Enough?
Barley and oats are among the world’s top 10 most produced grains – numbers 4 and 6, respectively. Scientists with the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) are working to improve those rankings and help American farmers while they’re at it.
According to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, American barley growers produced 4.05 million metric tons (a metric ton is 2,200 pounds) of grain in 2023-24, an increase of 7% over the previous year. Oat producers contributed 19.35 million metric tons to the world marketplace in 2023-24. While that total made the United States the world’s seventh largest producer, American farmers actually saw a 24% loss in yield compared to the previous year.
ARS research geneticist Kathy Esvelt Klos and Texas A&M research scientist Russell Sutton harvest oat rows. (Photo courtesy of Kathy Esvelt Klos)
The grain market can be a finicky place. Even if a farmer has a bumper crop, the grain may not sell if it’s of poor or marginal quality. The problems farmers face includes drought and other poor growing conditions and plant diseases that produce toxins in the grain. That’s where the team of ARS researchers came in.
“Our project looks at the problems faced by the barley and oat farmers and finds ways to tackle them using breeding, genetics, and other scientific approaches,” said Kathy Esvelt Klos, project leader and plant geneticist with the ARS Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research unit in Aberdeen, ID. “We learn which genes help barley and oat plants respond to diseases and which help them respond to environments.”
Klos’s team employs the genetic map of each grain to speed up the breeding process. Traditional breeding under field conditions requires years to determine how well a potential new variety will perform. Genetic tools, however, allow researchers make early predictions about lines that won’t be good enough.
“The United States is seeing change in the amount of precipitation, changes in what diseases infect our crops, and how much damage they do. We have also seen changes in the food products that barley and oat are used to create. Product changes can drive the need to find different grain qualities. Barley and oat breeding needs to be fast to develop new varieties that meet these changes.
“Time is important,” she said. “We don’t want to be playing catch-up.”
Among other things, Klos’s research looks into barley stripe rust, crown rust disease, and Fusarium head blight, all fungal diseases that affect barley and oats. Crown rust is the most damaging disease to oat in North America. Fusarium head blight also produces a toxin into the infected grain. This “mycotoxin” is called vomitoxin and when present above certain levels can sicken humans and animals that eat it.
Klos explained that all new barley and oat varieties are tested repeatedly as they move through the breeding program. Test varieties are discarded if their trait measurements and genetic predictions are not likely to be better than previous generations. For each year that a new line continues in the breeding program, it is tested in more locations and under different conditions – irrigation, rainfall only, and conventional and organic management. It can take 6 or more years for a line to be considered for advanced testing. The few that survive are tested by research partners in other parts of the country and for specific industrial uses.
“I like to think that the work I do today will help farmers and consumers for decades to come,” Klos said. “As long as the environment changes; as long as disease-causing organisms adapt to [develop] resistance in our new varieties; and as long as people keep inventing new ways to prepare and eat barley and oats, we will need to adjust varieties to fit the new needs.” – by Scott Elliott, ARS Office of Communications