The Oregon Naked Barley Blend (ONBB) is a resource for research and plant breeding. It serves as a tool for our OREI projects (Developing Multi-use Naked Barley for Organic Farming Systems I, II, & III) to teach K-12 students, home gardeners, organic growers, bakers, brewers, and other barley enthusiasts about natural vs. artificial selection. It consists of 753 doubled haploids derived from 33 crosses involving 28 different parental lines and 40 different grandparental lines. If you are interested in food barley, simplified plant breeding, and doubled haploid research/variety development opportunities this could be the resource for you!

The grandparental germplasm is genetically diverse and includes known alternative alleles for growth habit (facultative, spring, and winter), inflorescence type (2-row, 6-row), plant height (semi-dwarf, standard), seed color (blue, brown, purple, white), seed starch type (normal, waxy).

This diverse germplasm is also likely to have contributed allelic variation for uncharacterized traits including aroma, disease resistance, drought tolerance, flavor, malting quality, nutritional factors, and yield.

The blend can be planted in the winter or spring. It can be grown continuously as a blend and subjected to natural selection or certain plants can be selected and planted individually as a pure line. For more information on how to grow the ONBB on a garden scale, click here.

If you would like a seed packet of your own, we are able to send out small amounts of seed to interested parties. Unfortunately, we cannot send seed internationally at this time. Please contact Brigid Meints for more information. 

For further information on the development of the blend and pedigree details, click here