The composition of barley varieties in each community was compared using a Bray Curtis similarity index using EstimateS software (Colwell 2005).
Thus, in line with other published works cited in the Introduction, the present study has identified a strong association between altitude and genetic composition of barley landraces from Ethiopia, with a clear altitudinal cline shown.
As an example, larvae of the Lepidoptera Spodoptera littoralis fed on artificial feed, lima bean and barley showed a very different composition of bacterial intestinal species in a metagenomic study (Tang et al. 2012).
A study was carried out to determine the impact of fermentation of two cereals, barley and wheat, on chemical composition and nutrient digestibility in the small intestine and the total tract of growing pigs.
The pelleted concentrate had the following composition: 32% barley, 36% oats, 11% soy bean meal, 10% molassed beat pulp, 7% rape seed meal and 2% molasses.
The composition of the barley was determined and the results are summarized in Table 1.
Taken together, these results highlight a shift in community composition at the barley root-soil interface, which progressively differentiated the rhizosphere and root bacterial assemblages from the surrounding soil biota.
Permutational multivariate ANOVA based on distance matrices (ADONIS) revealed a marked contribution of the microhabitat (Bray-Curtis R2 = 0.11584; R2 Unweighted Unifrac R2 = 0.08851, p < 0.05) as well as phylogenetic-dependent contributions of the host genotype to the composition of the barley microbiota (Weighted Unifrac R2 = 0.24427; R2 Unweighted Unifrac R2 = 0.15262, p < 0.05).
Further research is needed to confirm if the planting date consistently affects nutrient composition and IVFD of barley at harvest.
The first experiment utilized a replicated incomplete 5×× 4 Latin square design with 8 lactating Holstein cows fed diets containing either corn alone or corn in combination with one of 4 barley varieties that differed in chemical composition.
