Malting Quality in a changing climate

In this project the student will investigate the impact of climate variation on barley using modern genetic and genomic techniques. Your work will focus on malting quality for beer and whisky in a current breeding programme, in particular the effect of environmental heat stress during plant and grain development. This project will use controlled environment and glasshouse work, and field trials in a combined physiological/genetic study to identify the traits that confer climatic robustness and the genetic variants that control them. This investigation will dissect the effect on malting quality using the IBH micromalting lab on the JHI site and facilities in Syngenta. This malting work will focus on the known complex interactions of malting quality with environment and genetic background whilst concentrating on elite material with desirable malting quality. This aspect of the project includes the opportunity for more detailed studies into the effect of climatic variables on deposition of starch and other polysaccharides in the grain, and the subsequent impact on malting quality.
Applications are encouraged from students with an interest in plant genetics and modern plant breeding. The PhD offers considerable training opportunities including placements with industry.
Background
Due to climate change the variability in annual weather patterns is increasing. In the 2020/21 growing season average UK spring temperatures were high, outside the 30-year range and in the 2021/22 harvest record summer temperatures were recorded. Climate models suggest these fluctuations and extremes are likely to continue and indeed worsen. There is a clear impact of these environmental stresses on crop yield and yield components, but also on malting quality. Malting is an industrial process and relies on an intake of a uniform quality barley crop for efficient and homogenous processing. These fluctuations in climate present a significant challenge to the malting industry and the barley supply chain. However, there is evidence that the malting quality of some barley varieties appears to be more robust to climate variation than others. This indicates that there is the opportunity to breed barley varieties that retain malting quality across a range of future climate scenarios.