We live in a world with a climate crisis and declining biodiversity, and at the same time there will be many more mouths to feed. In the coming years, more food must be produced if many people are not to go hungry.
Does plant breeding have a role to play in solving some of the upcoming challenges we face? And if so, how big a role can and should it play – now, and in the future?
In Denmark, we became farmers 6,000 years ago, and ever since, our ancestors have worked with and selected the best grains and plants.
But in the last 150 years, things have really moved forward. We may not think about it every day when we drive through the Danish landscape with large cultivated fields almost everywhere, but modern breeding and cultivation methods have increased yields and security of supply – and have thus become essential tools in the fight against hunger.
But how did we actually get here – and how big a role can and should plant breeding play now and in the future?
That's one of the questions posed by The Green Museum's new exhibition Guldkorn. And the answers - you'll be given the tools to delve into them yourself.
In the exhibition, you follow the cultural-historical story of the first grains of the Stone Age, the important beer, agricultural forms, wood processing, mechanization, the arrival of chemistry, large-scale agriculture and ecology. And between the museum objects, animated cornfields grow up around the visitors, while the experts in digital form take the visitors by the hand and guide them through high-flying theories, laws of inheritance and facts.
You will also have the opportunity to try it yourself. At the heart of the exhibition is the laboratory, where you can create your own answers to some of the problems of the future based on cross-breeding experiments and molecular breeding.
In full-length, today's plant breeders talk about their work, and in a game that we, in collaboration with the breeding experts at Nordic Seed, have filled with real data, you can prioritize the properties of the barley grain down to the smallest detail and create your own variety. And watch the results grow on the screens and help shape the exhibition.
In collaboration with the barley breeders at Nordic Seed, we have developed a game where you can design your very own barley variety. In the game, you must prioritize your variety's characteristics based on Nordic Seeds' best varieties - such as yield and disease resistance. When the plant is fully developed, you will be told how well it will perform, and then of course you must name your new variety.
If you want to participate in the competition for a barley grain in real gold, you will be included in a pool from which the plant breeders at Nordic Seed will choose a winner – and perhaps they will be inspired for the next naming. The competition runs until the summer of 2022.
Naming new varieties is something that plant breeders think a lot about. A name means something – it is the result of many years of work, and we are proud of the result. At Nordic Seed, we typically name new barley varieties in collaboration with the barley breeding group. Everyone in the group makes a suggestion, and then we check whether they are allowed in the European variety database. New names must not be too similar to names of existing varieties. Often, names are based on a quality that the new variety has. For example, the barley variety Bordeaux a beautiful, red color. Right now, the barley breeding group has chosen a special signature. All varieties developed from them must have a name ending in –way.
