Minutes of the Barley Crop Germplasm Committee Meeting
Held at the
USDA-ARS Cereal Crop Research Unit, Madison, WI
November 17, 2006
Attending: Brian Steffenson, Harold Bockelman, Mike Bonman, Don Obert (via phone), Cynthia Henson, Do Mornhinweg, Steve Ullrich, Les Wright, Brian Rossnagel (via phone), Richard St. Pierre (via phone), Kay Simmons (via phone), Mark Bohning, Sally Leong, Eric Jackson, Allen Budde, Mitch Wise
[I probably missed some folks sitting in the back row and the IT person]
Meeting was opened at approx. 9:30am by Chair Brian Steffenson.
Minutes of the 2004 meeting in Seattle were reviewed and approved.
Mark Bohning presented the National Germplasm Resources Lab report. He presented a summary of the CGC Chairs meeting in Ames, IA last summer. He also discussed the role that the CGC’s play in providing input to the National Plant Germplasm System. GRIN will be developing a new public interface on the web. Input from the committee is welcome. It will be reworked to make querying and data retrieval easier, to handle molecular-type data, and also to make connections to other Plant Genetic Resource databases around the world.
The National Program Staff report from Peter Bretting was distributed.
Kay Simmons discussed increased efforts with barley diseases, specifically the stem rust evaluations in Kenya and new funding for stripe rust research.
Harold Bockelman presented the NSGC report. In the past two years more than 700 barley accessions have been assigned PI numbers. Evaluations of NSGC barley accessions were discussed. The need for running check entries for several of the agronomic and quality descriptors was discussed. Accessions evaluated for BSMV should be noted on order packing lists to alert recipients of possible contamination. Future evaluations, including molecular and fingerprinting, were discussed.
Mike Bonman summarized the Foods Barley Research Forum held recently at Aberdeen. Joan Conway at the Beltsville Human Nutrition Center suggests that evaluations for anti-oxidants would be very useful. Mitch Wise is interested in evaluation for tocopherols – the cost would be about $10/sample. Perhaps first evaluate the core subset.
Brian Steffenson discussed the Barley CAP project. The four year project will generate 960 breeding lines each year which will be extensively genotyped and phenotyped. The lines will be stored in backup at Aberdeen.
Brian Steffenson discussed barley germplasm that he obtained for FHB screening from the Nordic Gene Bank and the Vavilov Institute. This germplasm, totaling 2,395 accessions, is available for deposition in NSGC. Also available will be 320 accessions of H. spontaneum of diverse origins from ICARDA.
Harold Bockelman and Mike Bonman informed the committee that there will likely be changes in management of the Barley Genetic Stock Collection (GSHO) next year with a pending retirement. The committee feels that GSHO is a very important resource, especially with new mapping populations being developed.
A 2005 paper in Crop Science, “Disease and Insect Resistance in Cultivated Barley Accessions from the USDA National Small Grains Collection” by Bonman, Bockelman, Jackson, and Steffenson received an award for Outstanding Paper on Plant Genetic Resources at the ASA-CSSA-SSSA meetings in Indianapolis.
Brian Steffenson discussed a poster that he and Yue Jin presented at the APS meetings in Quebec on resistance in barley to stem rust race TTKS.
Brian Steffenson gave a PowerPoint presentation on his collection trip in Turkey in 2005. Collected were a number of wild and cultivated barleys along with Aegilops and Triticum that should fill gaps in the NSGC.
Do Mornhinweg discussed the evaluations she has conducted on NSGC core accessions for Greenbug and Bird Cherry Oat Aphid.
Don Obert raised the issue of the proposal to remove registration articles from Crop Science and place them in a separate stand-alone journal. The committee discussed the pros and cons of this action. This discussion continued informally into the lunch hour.
Brian Rossnagel introduced Richard St. Pierre, who is the new curator for the barley collection at Plant Gene Resources Canada. Brian suggested that Richard replace him as the Canadian representative to the committee.
The meeting adjorned at approx. 1pm. Cynthia Henson and staff provided the committee with a tour of the brand new laboratory.