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Minutes of a Working Group on Barley.
Ad hoc meeting,
20 June 2004, Brno, Czech Republic
[PDF file 299KB]
(from: Report of a Cereals Network. First meeting, 3-5 July 2003, Yerevan, Armenia. Appendix I)



Priorities for Phase VII, agreed in July 2003






The European Barley Database


Barley Working Group members

Barley Meetings & Reports





  Background information   Sharing of responsibilities
  The European Barley Database   The International Barley Core Collection
  Barley Genes and Genetic Stocks   Germplasm collecting activities
  Link with EU Project   Pre-breeding and Genetic base broadening

Background information

The Working Group on Barley was convened for the first time in 1983, as one of the original six Working Groups developed during the first Phase of ECPGR. The Group developed and updated workplans at successive meetings. The last meeting (Sixth meeting) was held in Salsomaggiore, Italy, in December 2000, in conjunction with a meeting to discuss progress on the EU funded project GEN RES CT98 - 104 on "Evaluation and Conservation of Barley Genetic Resources in Europe".

The Group met in a parallel session with the other Cereals Network Working Groups, during the First Cereals Network meeting, held in Yerevan, Armenia, 3-5 July 2003. It also held an ad hoc meeting in Brno, Czech Republic, 20 June 2004.

The European Barley Database (EBDB)

The European Barley Database (EBDB) is central to the activity of the Barley Working Group. The first version of the EBDB was developed between 1984 and 1987. It contained passport data of 55 000 barley accessions from ca. 35 genebanks in Europe. A second version was built in 1997, including 90 000 accessions. Within the framework of the EU project on Barley Genetic Resources (1999-2002), the database has developed into a Barley Information System. The EBDB currently includes ca. 155 000 accessions from 23 European countries and from three non-European genebanks (the Australian Winter Cereals Collection (AWCC), Tamworth, Australia; ICARDA, Syria; and the Barley Germplasm Centre, Kurashiki, Japan), which led to the inclusion of ca. 38 000 additional accessions. Moreover, 1293 accessions from the International Barley Core Collection (BCC) are documented.

Besides passport data, the EBDB includes also evaluation results from the GENRES project on Barley Genetic Resources, available since August 2003.
The database utilizes the "Dynamic Data Analyser" (DDA) developed for visualizing evaluation data. The DDA was adapted to the GENRES evaluation data. The EBDB is searchable on-line [here].

Some effort is being put to re-engineer the database and prepare it for transition to Oracle, a different database management system.

Database on Barley Genes and Genetic Stocks (BGS)

During the Cereals Network meeting (Armenia, 2003) the information about the Database on Barley Genes and Genetic Stocks (BGS) was presented. The database was developed using AceDB, the database software used also for GrainGenes.

BGS will be included in GrainGenes and provides the possibility of including more data on genetic stocks collections. At IPK, Germany, there is a collection of mutants and other genetic stocks, which is not documented electronically yet. It was therefore recommended that links be established between the Web sites of the AceDB Barley Genetic Stocks Database and the EBDB.

Link with EU Project

A three-year EU project GEN RES CT98 - 104 on "Evaluation and Conservation of Barley Genetic Resources to improve their accessibility to breeders in Europe" was approved in 1998. The project started its activity in April 1999, with 28 partners from EU member states and 7 from non-EU countries, partially supported by ECPGR.
The project came to a close in September 2002 (see: PDF file [here]).

Sharing of responsibilities

In a discussion paper published in the Report of the Fifth meeting of the Working Group (see: PDF file [here]), the establishment of a "decentralized European Barley Collection" was proposed. During the Sixth meeting, the Group agreed to recommend the implementation of a 4-step mechanism for sharing of responsibilities, as follows:

Step 1. The Chairperson of the Working Group on Barley informs the Working Group members and genebank curators of the initiative and encourages its implementation

Step 2. The genebank curators offer to take responsibility, for maintenance and distribution to bona fide users, of a list of accessions and inform the CCDB manager of their detailed offer. This exercise should start from: (i) recent European cultivars released since 1950; (ii) material of local origin; (iii) unique material of each genebank; and (iv) all other material

Step 3. The CCDB manager combines the lists received from curators and identifies gaps in the responsibility net

Step 4. The Cereals Network Coordinating Group (NCG) reviews the progress made and makes further recommendations

This process was hindered by the heavy workload requested from the DB manager and the curators. New indications helping in the development of A European Genebank Integrated System are expected from the implementation of AEGIS.

The International Barley Core Collection (BCC)

The International Barley Core Collection (BCC) started from an initiative of the ECPGR Working Group on Barley. At the 1989 meeting it was proposed to create a "synthetic" barley core collection made up of accessions selected from European genebank holdings.

A BCC Task Force further developed the concepts and discussed them with more than 100 specialists worldwide. At the Sixth Barley Genetics Symposium in Helsinborg, Sweden, in 1991, it was recommended to extend the scope of the core collection and develop an international BCC. An international committee was formed to develop the BCC and monitor its progress. Its members are responsible for the selection of BCC accessions and their multiplication and distribution to users. Currently the BCC documentation is incorporated in the EBDB.
The following BCC subsets have been created and are available for evaluation and research purposes:

"European subset" (298 accessions; created by G. Fishbeck, Munich, Germany, now maintained by IPK, Gatersleben, Germany)
"East Asian subset" (380 accessions; created by K. Takaeda and K. Sato, Kurashiki, Japan)
"Americas subset" (152 accessions; created by H. Bockelman, Aberdeen, USA)
"West Asia and North Africa subset" (285 accessions; created by J, Valkoun, ICARDA, Aleppo, Syria)
"Australia and Oceania subset" (11 accessions; created by M. Mackay, Tamworth, Australia)

Partly available are:

"H. vulgare spp. spontaneum subset" (J. Valkoun, ICARDA, Aleppo, Syria)
"Other wild species subset" (R. von Bothmer, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden)

In order to complete the BCC, an Ethiopian/Eritrean subset, as well as a subset of genetic stocks need to be created. The Ethiopian/Eritrean BCC subset is presently being developed in the framework of a project involving scientists from Ethiopia, Norway and Sweden.

Germplasm collecting activities

See article: Status of barley germplasm collections in Israel, T. Fahima

Pre-breeding and Genetic base broadening

A discussion on the need of pre-breeding and genetic base broadening was raised during the ECPGR workshop on pre-breeding and base broadening held in conjunction with the Barley Working Group meeting in 2000, where it was clear that many breeders desire pre-breeding. It was realized that there is a need of long-term projects that ensure the incorporation of genetic diversity in barley breeding programmes, and that funding mechanisms different from the short-term project funding would be needed.
The Barley Working Group decided to study possibilities to carry out a survey among barley workers to sound out interest in pre-breeding. This topic was prepared for discussion during the open workshop of the Barley Working Group at the IBGS, Brno 2004.

Broadening the genetic base of barley was recognized as an important activity particularly as domestication and subsequent crop development have given rise to "bottlenecks" of reduced genetic diversity.



For more information or comments:
Please contact the Chair of the Working Group: Mr Helmut Knüpffer [click here] and Vice-Chair:
Ms Marja Jalli [click here]