Project Number: 3655-21000-041-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Feb 08, 2006
End Date: Feb 07, 2011

Objective:
Overall objective is to discover and develop basic knowledge of biological processes in barley that influence the expression of value-added traits and the quality of economically valuable crop tissues. This work includes the identification of chemical signatures of high quality malts by metabolic profiling malts produced from elite barley cultivars and core breeding populations, determination of the contributions of an enzyme to the production of fermentable sugars during industrial processing, and assessment of allelic variation in key enzymes that convert starch to fermentable sugars.

Approach:
Metabolic profiling of malts will be conducted using standard methods of derivatization, gas chromatography and mass spectral detection/ identification of sample components followed by multivariate analysis of data to identify metabolites that best define the trait "malting quality". Metabolite identification will be done using several mass spectra databases including the 7th edition of Wiley, Essential Oils/Flavor and Fragrance and my lab's personal database. Examination of enzyme contributions to fermentable sugar production will be by use of an immunological probe and by characterizing the recombinant enzyme in a heterologous expression system. Assessment of allelic variation of carbohydrases will be via PCR amplification of expressed mRNA followed by sequence analysis and exploration of functional consequences of documented polymorphisms.