UC-Riverside Geneticist Wins $1.7M NSF Grant

Daniel Koenig will study how barley adapts over time using a century-old experiment and modern genetic tools.

Updated on Nov. 3, 2026 in Life Sciences

UC-Riverside Geneticist Wins $1.7M NSF Grant

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Daniel Koenig, an assistant professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC-Riverside, received a $1.7 million National Science Foundation CAREER Award to study barley adaptation. The research will compare barley genes from a 1920s breeding experiment with genes from today.

Why it matters

Understanding the genetic adaptations that have helped barley survive in varied environments may help guide the crop's future as weather becomes more extreme. Barley is the fourth most-produced cereal in the world.

The $1.7 million National Science Foundation CAREER Award funds the study, which has only one generation of barley per year to observe. The reporting does not yet say which survival genes the comparison will identify.

The players

Daniel Koenig

Assistant professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at UC-Riverside who leads the barley adaptation research.

National Science Foundation

U.S. federal agency that funds basic scientific research and awarded the CAREER grant to Koenig.

University of California-Riverside

Public research university whose botany and plant sciences department is hosting the barley research.

The details

Koenig's lab is analyzing genes from 1920s-era barley varieties bred in Davis, Calif., and Bozeman, Mont., and tracking how those varieties continue to adapt. Undergraduate students will use traditional molecular biology and computational techniques, and the process could be repeated for other crops.

Barley was domesticated as a crop over 10,000 years ago.
Breeders began the barley variety experiment in the 1920s.
The NSF CAREER Award to Koenig was reported on November 3, 2026.

Big Picture

The NSF CAREER Award is the agency's flagship program for supporting early-career faculty who integrate research and education. Koenig's project fits that model by pairing a long-running 1920s breeding experiment with undergraduate training.

Students at UC-Riverside will take part in the project, training on molecular biology and computational methods. The same gene-identification approach could later be applied to other crops.

The takeaway

Studying how crops adapt over decades can reveal genetic traits that help food plants cope with changing climates. Readers interested in plant genetics can follow how these long-term experiments inform future agriculture.