Adapting to climate change: Researchers find natural gene variant that allows barley to flower earlier

A tiny mutation in the genetic material of barley ensures that those plants develop faster and thus flower earlier than established barley varieties. At the same time, plant yields remain the same, a team from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) reports in the Journal of Experimental Botany. According to the researchers, this is advantageous as the plants could potentially adapt better to the effects of climate change and continue to produce stable harvests.