Wild barley relatives

Barley is one of the world’s oldest and most important cultivated cereal grains. But it’s long history of domestication has resulted in greatly reduced genetic diversity, which isn’t ideal for plant breeding efforts. So, in this episode, Che-Wei Chang and Prof. Karl Schmid (University of Hohenheim) discuss their quest to find useful genetic variation in wild barley relatives. This episode explores the recent Heredity paper: “Physical geography, isolation by distance and environmental variables shape genomic variation of wild barley (Hordeum vulgare L. ssp. spontaneum) in the Southern Levant” https://www.nature.com/articles/s41437-021-00494-x