ABSTRACT
Pre-harvest sprouting in barley occurs in harvesting seasons with much rain and dewfall. Pre-harvest sprouting tolerance is based upon different mechanisms, which alone, or in concert lead to varietal or genotypical protection against sprouting. In cereal breeding, crosses are seldom made with the sole aim of obtaining genotypes with a specific dormancy period or resistance to sprouting. Many more or less simple selection methods are used for cereals although most of them were developed for wheat. Physiological patterns for development of the outer layers, the oxygen uptake, "weather resistance" against the rupture of these layers etc., are all to some extent at least, genetically based. In "mass" or "bulk" selections for sprouting resistance, correlation with other characters may lead to a parallel shift in the population means of these characters. Back-crossing methods for transferring sprouting tolerance in established varieties are possible.
