'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 A RADIATION HYBRID PANEL FOR BARLEY J. WARDROP, J. SNAPE, W. POWELL, G.C. MACHRAY Division of Genetics, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee DD2 5DA, Scotland

Radiation hybrid mapping is an extremely powerful technology, which has been extensively exploited to facilitate the construction of physical maps of the human genome.  A number of mammalian radiation hybrid panels are currently available to the scientific community for use as tools in genome mapping programmes.  We have shown that it is possible, using X-irradiated donor material in asymmetric somatic hybridisation experiments, to apply this technology to plant systems resulting in the generation of a 5000 Rad barley radiation hybrid panel.  This panel has been validated and characterised using a number of molecular marker-based techniques demonstrating the potential of radiation hybrid technology for genome analysis in plants.