The release, written by Iqbal Pittalwala, says UC Riverside will receive a $1 million grant from USDA to map the barley genome, a necessary step in breeding new barley varieties that improve yield, disease resistance, and food and malt quality.
The release said barley is one of the first domesticated cereal grains and today No. 4 in terms of production. It is geographically adaptable and can withstand cold, drought, alkali and salinity. Pittalwala wrote that barley has been a favorite target of geneticists for decades. The genome – with 5.3 billion letters of genetic code – is one of the largest among cereal crops and nearly twice the size of the human genome.
The story was picked up by some technical publications - Genome Web News and Medical News Today, to name two. But ultimately, the research will benefit a wide swath of peoples the world over.
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