A national project focused on organic naked barley for multiple end-uses, led by Dr. Brigid Meints of Oregon State University, has been re-funded after two successful iterations.
“Developing Multi-use Naked Barley for Organic Farming Systems III” aka The Naked Barley Project was awarded a $3.5 million grant for an additional four years from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative grant has eight objectives:
- Evaluate multi-use naked barley varieties and breeding lines in diverse, representative organic systems across the United States.
- Identify and characterize key agronomic and food, feed, and malt quality traits for naked barley lines grown under organic conditions.
- Understand the genetics of traits central for organically produced multi-use naked barley.
- Implement genomic selection on a large population of breeding lines created from parents chosen to target traits important for organic production.
- Educate the public about the performance of naked barley in various organic production systems, variety attributes, and end-use options.
- Observe, analyze, and report the results of natural selection and artificial selection on an organically grown naked barley composite population (ONBB).
- Use organic naked barley as a model to engage K-12 students in lessons about plant breeding, genetics, nutrition, and agroecosystems.
- Investigate, assess, and develop multiple markets for naked barley through engagement with the full spectrum of stakeholders.
Project collaborators include from breeders, researchers, farmers, millers, maltsters, bakers, brewers, distillers, chefs and other end-users in Oregon, California, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New York.
For more information and to learn about outreach events visit https://barleyworld.org/ and https://eorganic.info/Barley and follow @nakedbarley and @culinarybreedingnetwork on Instagram.