Tianhua He

Barley(Hordeum vulgare L.) is one the most important cereal crops in the world and cultivated both in highly productive agricultural regions as well as in marginal environments prone to adverse conditions.As a particularly resilient crop compared to other cereals such as wheat and rice,barley has the ability to adapt to biotic and abiotic stresses,holding much potential to increase production in marginal areas to sustain food security.Barley genome sequences from over 20 accessions are close to be completed at the reference genome levels by the end of this year,which include wild barley,landraces and cultivated barley.The genome sequences will provide unprecedent resources for genomics breeding Seventy percent more food needs to be produced to meet the global human population projected to grow into nine billion by 2050.Efforts of achieving this substantial increase have been retarded by the adverse impact of projected climate change on crop yield.Modelling studies on crop growth and climate change have produced robust estimates of the potential impact on global crop production under different emission scenarios.However,uncertainty in future CO_2 emission magnifies the uncertainties in modelling the impact of future climate change on global crop production.Furthermore,previous studies on predicting the impact of climate change on crop yield assume unchanged crop varieties and agronomic practice.We use an example to demonstrate how genomics selection can be used to improve barley yield under climate change