Despite the lack of funding under the programme-targeted financing of agricultural science, selective breeding continues. Disruption of breeding process even for one year requires a lot of time and human resources for restoration. Understanding the importance of continuous breeding process, scientists of Kazakh Research Institute of rice breeding named after I.Zhakhayev continue their work, hoping for a speedy resolution of problems with financing. To date, barley nurseries have been established according to the full scheme of the selective breeding process, more than 3500 lines and varieties of spring barley of different ecological and geographical origin are being studied. The collection contains unique varieties of domestic and foreign selection, covering a wide range of botanical diversity, origin, maturity (the collection includes ultra-early maturing varieties with vegetation period of 55-60 days). In the collection of special interest are highly productive forms of barley of two-row type of variety “nudum” and multi-row variety “soeleste”, which can serve as parental forms in the creation of bare-grained varieties. To expand the level of genetic variability along with hybridization, scientists use the method of induced mutagenesis. The main factor in the effectiveness of mutagenesis is the search for quantitative changes in mutant lines. As a result of research conducted since 2015, scientists have identified populations with a complex of productive traits and, most importantly, retained these indicators in subsequent generations. Currently, 15 highly productive mutant lines are being tested as part of competitive variety trials. The created collection of barley mutants is of practical interest for genetic improvement of barley germplasm. Thus, within the framework of creative cooperation with JSC “Nuclear Technology Park”, research on the use of induced mutagenesis as a source of creation of fundamentally new initial forms will expand the possibilities of synthetic breeding, obtain mutant lines characterized by resistance to abiotic stress factors, as well as significantly reduce the time of breeding new varieties by direct multiplication of mutant lines with a complex of positive traits.
At this stage, barley plants are in the tubing stage, and plant care is systematically carried out. It should be especially emphasized that the whole breeding process is laid down manually, and harvesting and threshing of each sample is also carried out manually, due to the lack of small-sized breeding equipment. This is painstaking work on each plant, on each grain of a small but united team of researchers devoted to science and their favourite breeding business!
