Barley Genetic Stock Center continues to grow diploid genetic stocks to increase and deposit fresh seeds to USDA National Seed Storage Laboratory for cryopreservation. Some 250 stocks were grown in 1989. However, the amount of seeds for each stock was not enough to deposit, because of rather poor growth of plants and most of them were lethal mutants which must be maintained in the heterozygous condition (only 50% of plants grown were heterozygous for lethal chlorophyll mutations). These materials are grown again in 1990 and are being harvested. Most of the 250 stocks will be deposited in 1991. Additional stocks are now growing. These stocks will be periodically deposited to USDA-NSSL, Fort Collins.
During the growth of these genetic stocks, all viable chlorophyll mutations were isolated. They were then grown in the greenhouse all at once. Their characteristics were frequently recorded frequently during their growth and classified based on similarity to or difference from the established stocks: f, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f7, f8, f9, flO, fc, or, zb, zb2, zb3, wst, wst2, wst4, rb, yst, yst2, yst3, etc.
Many of the genetically unknown/untested materials are being reciprocally crossed with normal green plants to test their genetic nature, such as maternal inheritance, Mendelian dominant, recessive or complete dominance.
Some mutants similar to the established stocks were crossed to these established stocks for allelism testing. Also untested stocks showing similar characteristics were reciprocally crossed to test their allelic relationships. These results have been and are being published in Barley Genetics Newsletter and various scientific meetinqs.