ARS | Publication request: BARLEY CULTIVAR IDENTIFICATION WITH MOLECULAR MARKERS

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: September 17, 1997
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: Varietal purity of barley seed and malt lots is important to the malting and brewing industries. This study was conducted to see if a modified polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique using random DNA primers could generate repeatable polymorphisms among the closely-related six-rowed malting cultivars 'Morex', 'Robust', 'Stander', 'Excel', and elite breeding line 'M77'. From a total of 80, 30 random 10-mer primers were selected based on their ability to generate reproducible polymorphisms between the cultivars 'Steptoe' and Morex. Bulked DNA isolated from leaves of 10 to 12 plants of each cultivar was amplified using the Stoffel fragment of recombinant Thermus aquaticus DNA polymerase and one primer per PCR. Nine of the 30 primers detected repeatable polymorphisms among the malting lines. Each cultivar or line could be distinguished from another with the exception of Stander and M77. The results of six primers were reproduced in a second laboratory. It was concluded that this PCR-RAPD technique could be useful for distinguishing the four six-rowed malting barley cultivars. A faster version of the technique may be required for practical cultivar identification by barley processing industries.