The invention relates to barley plants having a high -amylase activity. The barley plants of the invention may for example carry a mutation in one or more -amylase promoters, in the HIRT gene, in the HBL12 gene and/or in the WRKY38 gene. The invention further provides plant products prepared from said barley plants.

In traditional plant breeding approaches, chemical mutagenesis may be utilized to introduce nucleotide substitutions at random in the genome of a plant, i.e. without possibilities to control the sites of nucleotide changes. Because of genome complexities, the statistical probability is extremely little when it comes to finding a predetermined nucleotide substitution. The present invention, however, demonstrates how a novel, alternative use of digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR), preferably droplet dPCR (ddPCR), is developed to exploit finding of specific nucleotide substitutions in mutated genes. The entire platform comprises a screening method with a library of mutagenized organisms, digital PCR-based systems and a set-up to propagate and analyze identified, mutated organisms.

The present invention relates to a genetically modified plant which has enhanced resistance to one or more fungal pathogen(s).

A barley cultivar, designated BG Nitro, is disclosed. The disclosure relates to seeds, plants, and derivatives of barley cultivar BG Nitro, and methods for producing a barley plant by crossing BG Nitro with itself or another barley variety. The disclosure also relates to barley varieties or breeding varieties and plant parts derived from barley BG Nitro, to methods for producing other barley varieties, lines, or plant parts derived from barley BG Nitro, and to the barley plants, varieties, and their parts derived from the use of those methods. The disclosure further relates to hybrid barley seeds and plants produced by crossing barley cultivar BG Nitro with another barley cultivar. The disclosure relates to methods for developing other barley varieties or breeding lines derived from variety BG Nitro, including cell and tissue cultures and haploid systems.

The present invention relates to hybrid barley seed production and marker assisted selection of barley plants in order to obtain barley plants or seeds comprising an Ant 1 and/or Ant2 gene allowing color sorting of seeds.