Hutton scientists will share their research at Cereals 2025
A team from The James Hutton Institute, including scientists, researchers and geneticists from the International Barley Hub (IBH), will be taking part in this year’s Cereals event at Heath Farm, Leadenham in Lincolnshire, the leading technical event for the UK arable industry.
They will join over 600 suppliers, who will be exhibiting the very latest products, advice and information, offering live demonstrations and areas dedicated to agronomy, technology, machinery, business, education, environment and renewable energy to the expected 20,000 visitors to the event on 11th and 12th June.
Barley researcher, Malcolm Macaulay, said, “We always look forward to Cereals events as they provide a unique platform to communicate our science to the wider farming community.
“The International Barley Hub is a world leading centre of excellence in barley science. We work with international communities in science, research and academia, along with the UK barley breeding community, industrial and commercial sectors to bring scientific advances to the marketplace. Cereals provides a unique opportunity for us to engage with the full arable supply chain in one place and we look forward to two days of discussions and knowledge exchange based around our industry- focused research, innovation and new discoveries.”
This year, the Hutton stand will concentrate on the exploitation of locally adapted barley to mitigate the challenge of climate change.
Malcolm explained, “Our plots contain a collection of locally adapted (or landrace) barley from across the globe, harnessing extensive genetic diversity, though it is just a small sample of the available diversity. Landrace lines are locally adapted to a range of differing climates and have been used to generate novel populations. These lines can be used for future sustainable production under a changing and unpredictable climate.”
An emphasis on increasing yield over recent decades has narrowed the genetic diversity of our major cereals. Along with intensive farming practices, this has increased both the vulnerability to rapidly evolving pests and diseases and dependency on high agronomic inputs.
“Cereals provides a unique opportunity for us to engage with the full arable supply chain in one place and we look forward to two days of discussions and knowledge exchange based around our industry- focused research, innovation and new discoveries.”
Malcolm Macaulay, The James Hutton Institute
In stark contrast to the widely grown, high-yielding monocultures typical of today’s agricultural landscape, locally adapted landraces from the large geographical area in which barley grows, along with wild barley from the near east fertile crescent, offer a rich source of genetic variants that have the potential to redress these vulnerabilities and dependencies.
The IBH, funded through the Tay Cities Region Deal (TCRD), is exploring how landraces and wild germplasm, already adapted to the wide range of environments from which they were originally collected, can contribute to future crop improvements. Researchers hope to decipher the underlying genetics that have driven barley’s adaptation to different environmental conditions to future-proof the crop in the face of climate change and the drive to reduce agrochemical inputs.
They will utilise natural genetic diversity in their barley pre-breeding programmes and pass on all interesting products to the plant breeding sector to evaluate and use as parents in their own breeding programmes.
More about Hutton’s visit to Cereals 2025 is available here.
