Wild barley genomic resources for drought adaptability and quality improvement

Wild species of crop plants may contain genes for adaptation to environmental stresses. Wild barley, with higher yield stability and better adaptation to climate change, is a valuable novel gene source for improving drought tolerance, grain quality, and commercial applications. In this research, nested backcross populations (NBP) were developed by crossing 21 wild barley accessions to the Ryhan03 cultivar, and the F1 progenies were backcrossed to Ryhan03 once. Screening of the 443 NBP developed lines was performed based on stress tolerance score (STS) and grain yield during two BC1F3 and BC1F4 generations, then 95 drought-tolerant and susceptible lines were selected for further evaluation in the BC1F5 generation under two water conditions. Efficient NBP strategy might be valuable for developing improved barley cultivars for nutritional quality and drought tolerance. Reasonable diversity among the BC1F5 families demonstrated that strict selection for beta-glucan content, drought tolerance, and yield is feasible and successful. The considerable variation observed for quality-related traits was significant for achieving the desired advanced barley lines to meet various consumption preferences. Wild donors contributed several favorable alleles to quality traits and drought tolerance. Progeny lines T42, T5, T60, and T35 were introduced as high-yielding, drought-tolerant lines with high beta-glucan content.