Breeding the 'perfect' naked barley

I've been lucky to be allowed some time to indulge in unfunded hobby breeding at Harper Adams, but why isn't this work being done by a proper plant breeder?  The answer is that nearly all plant breeding in the UK is done commercially,  paid for by breeders' rights and and so breeders get paid for every tonne of seed sold or saved on farm.  Therefore it simply isn't economic to breed niche crops like naked barley or spelt - far better to go for the next barn-filler feed wheat.

My system is simple and low-tech:

1. Choose parents and make the cross
2. Grow the F1 plants in the glasshouse to get as many F2 seeds as possible (2000-3000 ideally).
3. Grow a plot of F2 in the field
4. Select the best naked grain ears and keep a sample of the remainder
5. Grow 10-20 of these selections over-winter as F3 in the glasshouse
6. Bulk the selections back (discarding any 'rejects' and keeping any really promising back for single-seed descent
7. Sow a plot of the F4 selections and a plot of the bulk F3 to allow further selections - don't want to discard too much too soon.
8. Mass select the F4 plot - e.g. remove talls, weak plants, diseased plants and repeat mass selection in following years.

By doing this, I've now got several mass-selected, fairly uniform populations for replicated yield trials plus some pure lines derived from single plant selections.

The photos are of some of the mass-selected plots in 2014, looking fairly uniform and an ear of a pure line coded S9.  I'm quite hopeful about this line as it has fragile pales that release the grains easily when threshed to give a very clean sample.