![Russian wheat aphid on barley leaf: Link to photo information](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/eot2008/20081107213207im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/apr04/k11166-1i.jpg) Burton barley resists attack
by the Russian wheat aphid, shown here on a leaf of barley that is more
vulnerable to the tiny pest. Click the image for more information about
it. |
"Burton" Barley Fends Off Aphids
By Marcia Wood
March 24, 2005
When they're attacked by Russian wheat aphids, leaves of vulnerable
barley plants develop tell-tale white streaks and tight, corkscrew curls. These
weakened plants produce fewer plump, nutritious kernels needed for feeding
cattle or sheep, or for foods such as pearled barley for soups--or malt for
making confections or brewing beer.
But an animal-feed barley named Burton, developed by
Agricultural Research Service scientists
and their university colleagues, resists attack by both kinds, or biotypes, of
Russian wheat aphids that are found in this country. Leaves on Burton plants
don't become streaked or curled when the green, one-sixteenth-inch-long aphids
puncture them to feed on the plants' sap. Without the snug, rolled-leaf
shelters, aphids become more vulnerable to their natural enemies, and more
easily knocked off the plant by wind or rain, according to ARS plant geneticist
P.
Phillip Bregitzer. He works at the agency's
Small
Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit at Aberdeen, Idaho.
Bregitzer and plant geneticist
Dolores
W. Mornhinweg at the ARS
Wheat,
Peanut and Other Field Crops Research Unit, Stillwater, Okla., chose the
sequence of parent plants for Burton barley. Those plants included two
well-known, ARS-developed malting barleys, Crystal and Klages; a popular
animal-feed barley known as Baroness, and a parent that Mornhinweg developed
from a wild, Russian wheat aphid-resistant barley from Afghanistan.
Burton is named for former ARS entomologist Robert L. Burton, now
deceased, who spearheaded much of the ARS Russian wheat aphid research from his
Stillwater laboratory.
Researchers at the
Colorado,
Idaho,
Nebraska and
New Mexico Agricultural Experiment
Stations collaborated to make Burton available to growers in 2004. Seeds of
this plant, described technically as a hulled, two-rowed spring barley, are
still available in limited quantities from the
University of Idaho's Foundation
Seed Program, 3793 N. 3600 E., Kimberly, Idaho 83341, phone (208) 423-6655.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's principal scientific research agency.