Abstract:

Drought is the major abiotic stress that dramatically threaten the food supply in the world, it's one of the most severe agricultural problems affecting plant growth and crop yield, therefore, the fundamental way to address drought damage and the food crisis are creating drought-resistant plants. Hordeum spontaneum have adapted to a broad range of environments and developed rich genetic diversities for drought tolerances. Drought-tolerant genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) have been identified in H. spontaneum and have great potential in barley improvement. In this paper, the study on H. spontaneum and its application on barley improvement were reviewed, and the problems of drought resistant breeding and its development direction were analyzed.