Researchers see dramatic potential in a new barley variety that can be milled into flour and used in breads and bagels.
The challenge will be convincing the milling and baking industries to use the barley, registered under the name Millhouse, in products that traditionally have been made from wheat.
A group of Canadian researchers developed Millhouse so that it could be processed in the same fashion as wheat and then blended with wheat flour.
The result is that the health-boosting qualities of barley can be incorporated into bread, bagels and noodles, said Mario Therrien, an Agriculture Canada breeder who helped develop Millhouse.
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“There are two big things with barley when you blend it with wheat,” said Therrien. “One of them is the health benefits go up. The other is the anti-staling properties.
“Barley flour keeps a lot longer than wheat flour by nature. When you blend it in with the wheat flour, it makes the product of that blend last longer.”
Therrien, based at Agriculture Canada’s Brandon Research Centre, said barley has more dietary fibre than wheat, a lot more vitamin E than wheat and a number of other healthful qualities, including antioxidants that can reduce the risk of cancer.
Because Millhouse is the first barley of its kind in Canada, it could take at least a few years before millers, bakers and noodle makers decide whether to embrace it, Therrien said.
“It’s not going to be happening soon. A lot of steps have to be gone through.”
Trials done on a smaller scale in a laboratory suggest that bread could be made from a flour blend containing 40 percent Millhouse barley and 60 percent wheat. Trials done by the Canadian International Grains Institute found that the barley flour could be incorporated at an even higher percentage when making noodles.
“For the noodles, we’re up to 80 percent and still making acceptable product,” said Therrien. “At 50 percent, it’s indistinguishable from the classic product. At 50 percent you see the benefits to the consumer.”
Because barley lacks gluten, blending with a wheat flour remains necessary.
Barley’s traditionally poor water absorbing properties was one of the main obstacles overcome in the development of Millhouse.
The flour milled from that barley variety is light coloured and does not grey when cooked.
Therrien described the agronomic traits of Millhouse as fair.
“Right now Millhouse is kind of restricted to where durum wheat will grow in terms of its disease package and that sort of thing. That isn’t bad but we want to broaden it to include as much of Western Canada as possible.”
Among those collaborating with Therrien in the development of Millhouse were Nancy Ames, a food chemist at Agriculture Canada’s Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg, and Brian Rossnagel, a barley and oat breeder at the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre.
