Breeding barley in the new millenium: proceedings of an International Symposium

Abstract

These are the proceedings of an international barley symposium held on 13-14 March 2000 in Ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico. The primary reason for holding this special seminar was to honor Dr. Hugo E. Vivar, who retired in February 2000 after a long and extraordinarily fruitful career. Barley researchers from Latin America, the USA, and Syria who were closely associated with Dr. Vivar were invited to make presentations at the symposium. Dr. Vivar became the head of the ICARDA/CIMMYT Barley Breeding Program for Latin America in 1984, after working for CIMMYT for nine years. In the course of his long career, Hugo worked on different types of barley for diverse environments and uses, but made a special effort to develop barleys for marginal environments, such as those in the Andean Region of his native South America, where subsistence farmers use barley for food. The higher yields produced by new, disease resistant barleys have significantly improved farm families’ food security all year round. The main focus of the ICARDA/CIMMYT barley breeding program, under CIMMYT leadership, is on Latin America, but the barleys it has developed are also sown in other parts of the world, such as China, Pakistan, and Kenya. One of the reasons they are so widely used is that they possess resistance to multiple diseases such as the three rusts, BYDV, fusarium head blight (FHB), scald, and net blotch. It should be noted that CIMMYT took the lead in introducing FHB resistant varieties into China through the variety Gobernadora. There is no doubt great progress has been achieved in improving barley for food, feed, and forage. The crop has been endowed with traits such as high yield potential, multiple disease resistance, and good grain quality. However, in the future research will also have to focus on improving the quality of malting barley, a cash crop that would provide barley producers in developing countries with a promising option for earning their living. In breeding one always builds on other people’s work, and the exchange of germplasm and information is crucial to developing new varieties.