Raising the Bar

Climate change and rising temperatures provide altered growing conditions for cereals, which in the future may be more suited to grow in areas which are too cold today. This is expected to be the case for barley, as it is an ancient crop with great environmental adaptability and better suitability than most other cereals to growing in the Arctic regions. Thus, barley has been selected as the focus crop of the recently developed project "Raising the Bar", which aims at promoting Arctic collaboration to explore future cultivation of high-yielding barley varieties with new opportunities for high value local products.

“Raising the bar” has received funding from the Arctic Connections Fund in Scotland and will be completed by The James Hutton Institute and the International Barley Hub, together with partners from the Agronomy Institute (UHI Orkney) and The Innovation Centre for Organic Farming.

- Until now, barley, in the Arctic region, has primarily been grown for straw and animal feed. This project gives us the opportunity to investigate the possibilities of higher temperatures providing an extended cultivation period for growing barley as a high-value crop which can, for example, be used for malt and whiskey production, says Sidsel Birkelund Schmidt, Senior advisor and project manager of The Innovation Centre for Organic Farming.

Activities of the project include publishing a report and hosting aninternational workshop, inviting breeding, agronomy, genetics, physiology, organic farming, climate modellers and social scientists from across the Arctic regions, to exchange knowledge on cereal cultivation in the Arctic region to promote climate-smart crops and pre-breeding material for sustainable agriculture. A key question to be addressed is whether it is possible to develop new barley varieties that are tailored towards higher yields and improved quality. 

- Climate change will cause the temperature to rise in the northern, Arctic regions, but is also expected to cause more unpredictable temperature and rainfall patterns, , so we need to figure out how we can best adapt agricultural production in these expected future local conditions, explains Sidsel Birkelund Schmidt.

She herself has previously been employed at the James Hutton Institute in Scotland, where her main focus was to explore the special adaptive traits of ancient barley landraces to tolerate nutrient-poor marginal soils.

- I am looking forward to participating in the dialogue about challenges and possible solutions for cultivation of barley under the changed climate conditions. In principle, the knowledge we gain from the project can be transferred to other crops in other parts of the world, she says.

Climate is a focus area of The Innovation Centre for Organic Farming, particularly identifying solutions which can contribute to reducing the climate footprint of organic farming and adapting to climate change.