BACKCROSS GAINS FOR 6-ROWED GRAIN AND MALT QUALITIES WITH INTROGRESSION OF A FEED BARLEY YIELD QTL

Fifty experimental barley lines were derived from a backcross of Morex and DH72, using the tatter as donor parent of the Steptoe chromosome 3. These BC1 derived lines, plus the parental checks, were grown by th e Montana Agriculture Experiment Station in irrigated and dryland expe riments at Bozeman in 1994 and 1995 and in a dryland trial at the Havr e station in 1995. The Steptoe chromosome 3 carries positive-value all eles for head-shattering and lodging resistance quantitative trait loc i (QTL) that effectively increased relative yield and adaptation chara cteristics in the environments tested. These parents and lines were us ed to test the hypothesis that Morex-level malt quality characteristic s can be recovered by backcrossing, with the addition of the yield-enh ancing genes from the Steptoe chromosome 3. Four grain quality traits were analyzed in all five experiments, and nine malting traits were an alyzed from micromalted samples from the 1995 Bozeman irrigated experi ment. The results support the contention that the Steptoe chromosome 3 yield QTL has no adverse pleiotropic effects on malt quality, relativ e to Morex, although a slight decline in test weights may occur (simil ar to 1-2% of the average observed over all experiments).