USE OF MICROSATELLITE DNA TO DISTINGUISH MALTING AND NONMALTING BARLEY CULTIVARS

Efficient and reliable approaches for distinguishing barley cultivars are urgently needed for the malting, brewing, and feed grain industrie s. The potential of microsatellites, also known as simple sequence rep eats (SSRs), to uniquely identify barley cultivars was evaluated on a sample of closely related, visually indistinguishable, white aleurone six-rowed malting and feed (general purpose) barley cultivars grown in Canada. A total of 38 SSRs were tested against the DNA extracted from leaf tissue of 11 barley cultivars. Seventeen SSRs showed allelic pol ymorphisms among the 11 cultivars, providing a total of 40 different a lleles. By combining data for five SSR loci, all 11 cultivars could be distinguished. DNA extracted from single seeds gave allelic SSR patte rns similar to leaf DNA and could be used for a rapid system of cultiv ar identification.