WHAT WERE THE STRATEGIES OF GENETIC IMPROVEMENT OF MALTING BARLEY IN ARGENTINA IN THE LAST 40 YEARS?

Abstract

Barley is the fourth largest cereal crop in the world in terms of production volume, behind corn, rice and wheat (FAOSTAT, 2022). In South America, Argentina is the largest producer of barley (USDA, 2022), specializing in malting barley whose production has increased significantly and steadily since the late 1980s. The production volume of a crop depends on the area devoted to it and the yields achieved. Given the physical limitation of expanding the agricultural area, the key to increasing production lies in increasing the yield achieved per unit area. In this context, genetic improvement plays an important role in increasing yields per unit area. Year after year, there has been evidence of a sustained increase in barley yields in Argentina (BCR, 2022), associated with the process of genetic improvement and progress in the knowledge of the crop and the application of new production technologies (Abeledo et al., 2003; Satorre and Andrade, 2020). Previous studies determined that the rate of yield gain of malting barley in Argentina due to the effect of genetic improvement was 41 to 27 kg ha-1 yr-1, depending on the environmental condition and the period considered (Abeledo et al. considered (Abeledo et al., 2003; Giménez, 2017); with cultivars released up to the years 1998 and 2007, respectively. Until the 1990s in Argentina, the malting barley market was dominated by cultivars developed in breeding programs.