Previously ignored diversity in wild relatives of crops has been of increasing interest in recent years as a source of novel alleles. Such novel alleles can provide answers for establishing pathogen resistance or drought tolerance, just to name a couple. The wild relatives of the crop barley (Hordeum vulgare) are of particular interest, as there are close relatives that have different life cycles (perennial or annual). Utilizing this gene pool, I will investigate the traits associated with perennial life cycles by producing interspecific crosses and scoring phenotypic traits of later established populations.
