Adapting to a new climate

Although wild barley really grows in warm, dry areas, like in Turkey and south-west Asia, cultivated barley grows better in the much cooler and wetter climate of northern Europe. In order to adress the challenge of not letting the flowers sprout early in the season that equates to less productivity, barley is flowered later in the year, enabling a longer period of growth before setting seed. In a surprising experiment, scientists obtained new samples of barley from Iran, which is not relevant to European agriculture. Nevertheless, some of them where found with flowering time mutation. Scientists say that the mutation has its roots in wild barley growing in the Zagros mountains, where the growing conditions might be same to those of northern Europe.