Sunstaining Barley Webinar Series | Winter Cereals Potential

Sustaining Barley Webinar Series
Winter Cereals Potential: Bolstering sustainability with winter barley
March 12, 2025 @ 1 pm CT
Watch the recording here

Dr. Kevin Smith | Professor | University of Minnesota
Presentation: Advancing cold temperature tolerance in the great north Download slides
Bio: Our research is aimed at (1) understanding the genetics of traits that will make barley profitable and sustainable in the Midwest and (2) applying that genetic understanding to develop improved varieties through breeding. Our breeding program develops spring-sown and fall-sown (winter) barley varieties. Our spring breeding program has been in place since the early 1920’s and has been focused on varieties suited to the malting and brewing industries. As such, the primary traits of interest our yield, malting quality traits, and disease resistance, in particular Fusarium head blight. Our winter breeding program started in 2009 and the major emphasis is to improve winter hardiness, yield, and malting quality. Introducing winter barley in Minnesota cropping systems could help increase crop diversity, improve ecosystem services such as improved soil conservation, nutrient cycling, and weed suppression in addition to increasing yield and facilitating earlier harvest.

To accomplish our breeding goals we are actively involved in implementing and evaluating a variety of breeding methodologies. We use genetic markers in our program including those that are identified through bi-parental QTL mapping and genome-wide association studies (GWAS). This has lead to the use of marker assisted selection (MAS) to select for desirable alleles as well as a genomic selection (GS) approach that uses genome-wide markers to make predictions about important traits that can be used in selection.

Phil Bailey | Eastern Business Manager | SeCan
Presentation: Reviving Winter Barley in Eastern Canada Download slides
Bio: Mr. Bailey has worked in seed research, development and sales for wheat, barley, oats and soybeans for the  past 25 years in Ontario. Mr. Bailey is currently the Eastern Business Manager for SeCan which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada and is the largest seed company in Canada, with sales over 240,000 tonnes of seed per year. Mr.  Bailey started his career working for a small private wheat company in Ontario called C&M Seeds. During his time at C&M Seeds he focused on wheat research and variety development before moving into a marketing and sales role with the company. In 2006, he joined SeCan as their Eastern Business Manager and is responsible for working with SeCan’s 100 member companies across Eastern Canada. His main crops of focus are soybeans, wheat, oats and barley. Mr. Bailey grew up on a 1,000 acre farm in Northern Ontario raising beef cattle and growing canola, wheat, barley and oats. Mr. Bailey holds a degree from the University of Guelph (B.Sc.) specializing in plant science.