Location: Cereal Crops Research
Project Number: 5090-21430-012-006-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2023
End Date: Jul 31, 2025
Objective:
Assess the effect of sulfur fertilizer rate and product on malting barley yield, quality, and the metabolome of barley kernels. The proposed analysis will inform both Idaho barley producers and ARS how nutrient management strategies impact malting barley grain quality and the metabolite composition of barley seed.
Approach:
Cooperator will provide grain material from two malting barley varieties grown at 2-3 southern Idaho locations in 2023 and 2024 (and perhaps 2025) under 5-6 sulfur rates to the ARS team for metabolomic analysis (approximately 450 samples per year). Metabolome analysis on mature barley seeds will be conducted by ARS scientist using in-house platforms. The combination of data from these analyses will likely allow chemical annotation and relative quantitation of 200-400 distinct metabolites in the barley seed samples.
Cooperator will provide flag leaf material from 1-3 locations of the same field experiments (2023 and 2024) described above (approximately 150 flag leaf samples per location per year). Metabolome analysis, small RNA sequencing, and degradome sequencing will be performed by ARS scientist on samples of greatest interest after the grain metabolome analysis.
