Can wheat keep up with climate change and food security demands? Simon Griffiths @johninnescentre.bsky.social will explore how precision breeding can transform the future of wheat genetics. IWGSC Webinar: 15 May 2025 at 11 AM EDT! 🔗 Sign up today: tinyurl.com/2k78bmmh

It is indeed. Highly surprised it isn't already

Wonderful talk from @delfidorussen.bsky.social at #Monogram2025 about DNA methylation mutants in wheat. You can read the full MET1-1 mutant characterisation which was just published this week @jxbotany.bsky.social ⬇️

This is an interesting read! 'Chromosome-level haplotype-resolved genome assembly of bread wheat’s wild relative Aegilops mutica' Grewal, S., Yang, Cy., Krasheninnikova, K. et al. buff.ly/dtiHRE7

ICYMI on Sunday - here’s a bit more background on my new regular beer column for the Sunday Times www.petebrown.net/2025/02/27/m...

Article, New Scientist, Feb 2021 on carbonised malted barley. Peter Steen Henriksen at the National Museum of Denmark and his colleagues used a scanning electron microscope to examine grains found in several archaeological deposits. Photo of Viking era #malt. 🏺🍺 www.newscientist.com/article/2268...

Congratulations @cristobaluauy.bsky.social. You have played a major role in the resurgence of the John Innes Centre. Onwards and upwards. www.jic.ac.uk/press-releas...

📢 We Support #NGTs and we want the EU to support them too!🌱 We have called upon people to show their support for New Genomic Techniques (NGTs) to see the EU NGT legislation move forward. 🌟 Show your support by posting your own video, using #ISupportNGTs, and tagging us!

An interesting piece by @rogerprotz.bsky.social that deserves a read! wb.camra.org.uk/2025/01/30/g...

A glimmer of hope for cask ale in the otherwise gloomy landscape of global takeovers. Good luck to the new owners of Jennings & fingers crossed for other ales cast aside by the lager giants.

It was straw work class last week. The round basket (not mine) was made in the 1970s. Look at the quality of bundling and stitching. The oval baskets are mine, one bere, one oat straw. I prefer to work with bere barley straw. In the past bere straw was as useful as the grain. 🏺 🪡 #straw #baskets

Based on the #BreedingValue project, we've added new trait data visualizations in the form of radar, bubble and heatmap charts for scale-type traits to highlight the differences or performance of individual germplasm. 3/5

Finally, we've added another data aggregation view to the statistics page that highlights the contribution of each project partner to the overall database. This both showcases data origins as well as giving credit to all collaborators. 5/5

exciting to watch #root #rootforaging #circumnutation and #rootangle formation on soil in darkness - imaged via #IRLEDs and #RaspberryPi camera #plantscience exploring the #hiddenhalf - testing image analysis @bokuvienna.bsky.social using the #DDrC device Simon Pree et al.

Heterodichogamy or alternate dioecy, or serial transgenderism, in more common parlance, well that's just nuts! And it's now finally understood. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Our barley queen! Very sad to say farewell to Tammy as she finalises the last of our 2024 #OzBarley samples before she heads back to China. It has been such a joy having her as a member of our team @scienceanu.bsky.social working on improving cereal root & stem architecture!

Our IBH seminars are always interesting and thought provoking (and occasionally not about barley) so why not drop into one - like this one on Thursday or check out the archives on www.barleyhub.org.

📢IPMNET Bulletins are on @FarmPep farmpep.net/resource/ipm... How long does the crop canopy need protecting? (20 min video) www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u5Q... H2020IPMWorks Hub Scotland have been busy, and first IPMNET Conference speakers announced, full agenda soon

Cool graphic from KWS on the #GenomeEditing timeline. Impressive how few years passed between the first use of CRISPR/Cas9 in a crop plant (2013) to the first release of an edited crop ( #GABATomato ) (2021). Trad. #PlantBreeding can take decades! 😮 www.kws.com/corp/de/inno... #PlantScience

If you are interested in plant stem cell systems, meristems and development of cereals: We are organising an international symposium on "Cereal Meristems and Stem Cell Systems", see attached announcement. www.cscs2025.de for more details

A greener world & excellent career prospects. Apply now for one of our #BARIToNECTP #PhD projects run in partnership with industry Deadline 19th January 2025. For more info visit: baritone.hutton.ac.uk #barley #research

RESEARCH: 'Sterility of basal spikelets in wheat: predetermined fate or a matter of resources?' - Santiago Tamagno et al, doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

📢New paper!! A specific "killer" gene appears to protect some fungal threats as they invade wheat. Disarming these defences could offer a pathway to keeping pathogens in check. Full story 👇 www.rothamsted.ac.uk/news/killer-...

Good news for the future of UK agriculture

Maize #diversity in #Zimbabwe Investigating nutrient content of landraces and biofortified #maize hybrids across different agronomic practices with Dr Grace Kangara from @rothamsted.bsky.social and National Gene Bank of Zimbabwe 🇿🇼 (with statistical guidance from @geostatlark.bsky.social)

Happy New Year! Looking forward to 2025 in the pursuit of #betterbarley

The wonderful world of plant genetics and diversity

On @pelliclemag.com today I've written a piece that discloses our traffic, our finances, a little about our aims for 2025 and why you should be subscribing if you read our content. Give it a read here: www.pelliclemag.com/home/2024/12/29/where-were-going-we-dont-need-roads-pellicles-year-in-numbers

'Into a steep, awkward acre & a half site, they shoehorned all the production side (barley lofts, washbacks, wash charger, wash & spirit still) plus 7 bonded warehouses for 2,500 casks. The worm tub sat on stilts outside, jutting several feet over the river below.'

#OnThisDay 28th December 1922 Scottish Malt Distillers Ltd. officially acquires Dean Distillery, Edinburgh. Unfortunately during this time of 'distillery absorption' by the big firms, it is never reopened. #WhiskyHistory Image from: Townsend, B. Scotch Missed (2014)

"Crown Shyness" is not about royal abdication but rather the tendency of apparently only some tree species to develop dissected canopies in forests. Something new for me!

What is malt? Here's a nice explanation of how base malt is made in a modern maltings. A germinating kilning vessel (GKV). Modern equipment. The fundamental process is the same as a malting floor or malt house. Steep, aerate, germinate and carefully kiln. 🍺 #malt #beer theswaen.com/our-craft/th...

Defra posted UK #harvest24 production stats on Friday. Below is UK spring barley production in England & Scotland. Interesting Scottish production is stable around the 2Mt level but English fluctuates more widely between 3 and 5Mt. Problems sowing winter crops clearly affect English production.

New Resource: "The near-complete genome assembly of hexaploid wild oat reveals its genome evolution and divergence with cultivated oats" rdcu.be/d2gI4 Hexaploid wild oat + 117 global wild and cultivated accessions: large fragment duplication event during domestication.

Helpful papers for trainees #4: Pot size matters: a meta-analysis of the effects of rooting volume on plant growth This one is for the plant biologists. Experimental design matters! 🧪 🌱 🌏 #PlantBiology #AcademicSky Link: www.publish.csiro.au/fp/FP12049 #PapersForBeginningLearners

Tough times for farming and an age crisis for farmers.

... For now, the plot thickens; Flor’s classic ‘gene-for-gene’ hypothesis that has shaped our understanding of plant resistance to pathogens since 1940’s might be an oversimplification we may have to consider that differences in effector gene expression underly disease outcomes in the field.

Beautiful Brassicaceae fruit-shape diversity. And here we tell you (part of) how it’s done! rdcu.be/d3i8x What a great collab it’s been! Thanks Yang Dong, @matmajda.bsky.social, Richard Smith and entire team. @natureplants.bsky.social @oxfordbiology.bsky.social @johninnescentre.bsky.social

It's reached the thick coat in brewery stage of the year. Six years ago today we brewed our first batch of beer in our on farm brewery. Thanks for all the support since then. #Ballykilcavan #Laois #IndependentBeer #SupportLocal

Can't mistake the smell of mildewed barley in the morning

Our yield trials are off to a good start. Some non-uniform emergence in some trials due to heavier residue in spots + dry conditions after planting. We all know variation in soil fertility is a key cause of error in trials, but I think variation in residue is another big one.

14 & 4 new additions to the winter & spring barley RLs respectively in today's announcement by AHDB Cereals, although some of the former are regional. See ahdb.org.uk/news/new-rec...

Join our PhD project based UoN at Sutton Bonington Campus! As part of the BARIToNE consortium, the overall objective is to increase the sustainability of barley within the malt supply chain by reducing carbon emissions through improved soil health (Project code 25I) www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

I write one critical review on my blog as practise and the distillery goes into receivership a month later. Pretty awful news as most of the stuff I’ve had from them has been great. My thoughts with the affected staff. www.thespiritsbusiness.com/2024/11/wate...

Sad news. Waterford Whisky have been really innovative with their Cathedral of Barley and studies on how barley varieties and environment act and interact to affect spirit flavour www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

Barley Pan-Genome version 2 update from Micha Bayer this morning. V3 is on its way! #pangenome #barley #core #shell #cloud #cnv #sv

Really interesting #harvest24 statistics from Ireland. Spring barley average yield of just over 7.3 t/ha really impressive when most sowings took place after the time when most growers would hope to be finished ages ago. This was just 0.2t/ha down on the 5 yr average! www.agriland.ie/farming-news...

introducing BarleyMicroBreed, an Eu Horizon Project to Bluesky :), from lab to field approach to understand how roots adjust growth and function to improve root-microbiome interaction upon drought agro.au.dk/forskning/in...

2024 has been a year of new beginnings so it seems fitting that my first @bsky.app post is to celebrate the wonderful team that have joined me to start our new crop science adventures @scienceanu.bsky.social. Excited for what’s to come!