Research for the benefit of food security: A new line of barley achieves good crop yields even under poor environmental conditions. It has been bred by a research team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which crossed a common variety with various types of wild barley. The researchers then planted the new lines of barley in five very different locations around the world, observed the growth of the plants and analysed their genetic make-up. As the team reports in “Scientific Reports”, some of the plants were not only more resistant to heat and drought, but in many cases achieve higher yields than local varieties.
EurekAlert! by Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg