M. Sc.

Agriculture, 2nd semester, 1st Year

SST – 502 Seed Production in Field Crops
Unit I
Floral structure, breeding and pollination
mechanism during Seed production in Barley
Lecture No. 09
Dr. Jai P. Gupta

Assistant Professor, School of Agriculture

Outlines

 Introduction
Floral biology and Pollination Techniques
Stages of seed production
Seed Production technique
Assignment/exercise on topic
References
Introduction
 Barley (also known as groats) is a cereal grain botanically known as
Hordeum vulgare L.

 It is believed for its origin from western Asia or Ethiopia.

 Barley is still considered one of the top five cereal grains in the world.

 Only ten percent of barley is used as human food, while the

remaining percentage is used for brewing malt beverages, including beer
and whiskey.

 However, the majority of harvest barley is used for livestock feed.

⚫ Chromosome number is n=7 and 2n=14

⚫ A naturally self-pollinated crop.

⚫ Inflorescence is spike

⚫ Spikelets are the flowering units. Arranged in triplet in opposite

manner at each node.

⚫ Lemma and Pelea are intact with the seed (grain).

⚫ Anthesis starts slightly above from middle and progresses upward

and downward.
⚫ Blooming of spikes of a plant completes in 7-9 days.

⚫ Pollen viable for 46h at 26°C. 35-45µm in size. Anemophillous

⚫ Stigma receptive till 6-8 days after blooming.

⚫ Fertilization after 5 minutes after pollen adhere to stigma.

⚫ Out crossing depends upon Genotype

⚫ Winter varieties strictly self pollinated about 99%

⚫ Spring varieties calleistogamous about 10% out crossing

Pollination Techniques

SElFING
⚫Self pollination occurs naturally.

⚫Cover the spike with a butter paper bag to avoid any possible
contamination
CROSSING
1. Emasculation

⚫ In evening, cut the lateral spikelets with scissors retaining 8-15 lateral
spikelets on a spike.
⚫ Clip off 3-4 spikelets from the basal side and 4-5 florets from the
apical side of the spike.
⚫ Cut 1/3 portion of a floret with scissor and remove anthers with fine
sharp pointed needle from spikelets before anthesis starts.
⚫ Carefully handle the flower and see that pistil does not get damaged.
⚫ Cover the emasculated spike with a butter paper bag.
2. Pollination

⚫ In the evening, bag the spike of male parent before dehiscence of

anthers.
⚫ Next day collect the pollens in a Petri dish.
⚫ Apply the pollen grains to the stigma of female with a camel hair
brush.
⚫ Cover the spike again with its respective bag after pollination.
Stages of seed production

In Barley depending on the demand 3 or 4 or 5 stages of seed

multiplications are permitted under seed certification programme as
follows.

Breeder seed - foundation seed - certified seed

Breeder seed - foundation seed stage 1- foundation seed stage 2 –

certified seed

Breeder seed - foundation seed stage 1- foundation seed stage 2 - certified

seed 1- certified seed 2
Selection Of Suitable Agronomic Region

Barley may be grown in subtropical climatic condition. The crop

requires around 12-15 C during growing period and around 30 C at
maturity.

It can not tolerate frost at any stage of growth and incidence of frost at
flowering at highly detrimental for yield.

The crop posses vary high degree of tolerance to drought and sodic
condition.

Barley is mainly grown in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Punjab, Madhya

Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Jammu
Kashmir
Selection Of Seed Plot

 The land that is to be used for seed production should be fertile, well
levelled and free from drainage problems.

 At higher elevation, specifically in the foothill areas, emergence of

volunteer plants is a problem. In such cases, adequate care is to be taken
to ensure that such volunteer plants do not come in the way of
production of good quality seeds.

 Also care should be taken to avoid production of seed in field which has
a history of tundu disease infection
 Isolation and Preparation Of Land
 Seed plot should be isolated from other barley variety plots

by a minimum distance of three meters, and no loose smut

infected wheat, triticale or rye field should be there within

150 meters.

 The precaution is necessary to ward-off infection by seed borne

pathogens.

 Two to three ploughing with cultivator followed by planking after every

ploughing.

 To save the crop from Termite, Ants and other insect, seed treatment is
advisable
Seed rate, treatment and planting time

 100 kg seed/ha in line sowing with row to row and plant to plant
distance of 20cm and 5cm, respectively.

 The seed treatment with Vitavax75 WP @2.5g/kg or tebuconazole

@1.25g/kg seed should be done before the sowing of the seed.

 Optimum sowing time for seed of all the varieties is 10-25 November
Method of sowing

 A low seed rate of 80 kg/ha is recommended to avoid interplant

competition and bolder seed development.

 Seed production plots should be sown with the help of seed drill for
placement of seed at uniform depth and plant to plant distance This
facilitates the ease in spotting of off-type plants and their rouging.

 The following care should be taken before sowing of breeder seed. The
seed drill needs a thorough cleaning of the pipes, seed cups and bin.

 Any left back seed will contaminate the seed production plot.
Rouging and Weed control

 Seeding depth of two inches or less for barley

 Barley is more sensitive to deep seeding than wheat. There will be a

greater yield loss with barley sown at three inches or more.

 For the control of broad-leaved weeds 2,4-D at 500 g/ha or metsulfuron

at 4 g/ha or carfentrazone at 20 g/ha can be sprayed using about 250
liters of water/ha.

 In barley, pinoxaden (5.0EC) @100ml/ha should be sprayed at 30- 35

DAS
Diseases & Insect Control

 Powdery mildew caused by Erysiphe graminis can be controlled by

using fine sulphur (200 mesh) @15-20 kg/ha or 1% Karathane.

 Helminthosporium leaf spot diseases can be effectively controlled by

spraying with copper fungicides or Dithane Z-78.
Nutrition & Irrigation
 60:30:20 kg (N:P:K) in barley.

 1/3rd quantity of N with full dose of P and K at the time of sowing

and remaining 2/3rd at first node stage i.e. 35-40 DAS should be
applied.

 5-6 irrigations are required.

 First at 20-25 DAS and thereafter at 20 days interval irrigations are

required in barley.
 Time & Method of Harvesting
 Barley crop gets ready for harvest by the end of March to first fortnight of
April. Since barley has shattering character, it should be harvested before
over ripening to avoid breaking of spikes due to dryness.

 Extra care is needed to avoid mechanical mixing that is likely to occur

during harvesting, threshing, seed treatment, packing and all through the
processing steps. These stages are to be full proof from potential seed
mixture. Threshers, combine harvesters, trailers, processing machinery,
etc. should be thoroughly cleaned before harvesting.

 Seed production plots of more than two hectares are suitable for combine
harvesting and smaller plots can be harvested manually and threshed by
machine.
Storage of raw seed

 Barley grain absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and should be stored
at an appropriate dry place to avoid storage pest losses.

 After sun drying seed should be filled in neat & clean bags.if old bags
are used they should be properly cleaned and treated before use.

 Each bag should marked properly.

 The stacks of bags should be made on wooden bags.

 The godown to be used should be cool, clean & sprayed with malathion
& timely fumigation should be necessary.
Assignment/Exercise

1. Write a assignment on Seed Production technology of Barley .

References
1. Agarwal, P.K. 1994. Principles of Seed technology. ICAR, New Delhi.

2. Dhirendra Khare and Mohan S. Bhale. 2007. Seed Technology.

Scientific Publishers (India), Jodhpur.

3. https://www.britannica.com/plant/barley-cereal

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barley