This project launched a multi-regional farmer-participatory plant breeding endeavor to develop a new crop to diversify organic crop rotations and economic opportunities: naked (hull-less) barley with desired protein and beta-glucan content and other grain qualities for food, feed, and brewing applications. The project employed three research approaches:
(1) Research station and on-farm trials of about 40 naked barley cultivars and advanced breeding lines in six states to evaluate yield, weed-competitiveness, disease resistance, seedling vigor, and grain quality under organic management.
(2) A diversity trial of over 600 winter and spring barley breeding lines to identify genetic variation in priority traits and initiate development of new cultivars for organic systems.
(3) A crowd-sourced approach to plant breeding, providing a composite naked barley seed mix and educational resources to K-12 school systems and homestead gardeners.

A survey of 80 organic producers elucidated breeding priorities and confirmed strong interest in naked barley as a new crop for organic production. Fungal diseases, for which few effective organic fungicides exist, presented a top challenge in barley breeding. Field trials and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) identified breeding lines with weed competitiveness, resistance to several pathogens and abiotic stresses, and desired food and malting traits. Many naked barley lines showed incomplete separation of hull from grain, indicating a need to breed and select for threshability. Adverse conditions that caused poor yields or grain quality in some trials such as winterkill in the upper Midwest, pre-harvest sprouting in rainy seasons, and disease outbreaks also provided opportunities to identify and select lines with resistance to these stressors.