Barley can be made to act more like corn in cattle.
Some livestock producers say barley may be a nearly ideal feed if the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre researchers can slow its breakdown in livestock rumens.
If the CDC accomplishes this, it will be helping growers improve the domestic cattle feed market and give cattle producers an alternative to corn.
Vern Racz of the Feed Resource Centre said corn “has more energy than barley, but barley could be better if it were able to release its energy more slowly, like corn does.”
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Barley is considered a hot feed, one that breaks down rapidly. Corn’s starch is available over a longer period of time. Researchers refer to this as slow DMD or dry matter disappearance.
Low priced corn, mainly from the United States, wiggled its way into the Canadian feed market after two western Canadian droughts left barley supplies short and pastures dried.
Once corn feeding became a practice in the competitive southern Alberta market, producers also came to enjoy its low incidence of bloat and acidosis due to its slow DMD.
American producers soon will benefit from Valier barley, a variety developed by researchers in Montana. The Montana State University variety is similar to Canadian Harrington.
Brian Rossnagel, a senior barley breeder with the CDC, said his program, funded by the Western Feed Grains Research Fund and the Saskatchewan government, will be based on “more modern, higher yielding, heavier, larger and more even seed size feed varieties we already have up here.”
Working with the Montana breeders, CDC scientists have found some promising genetic lines from the World Barley Core Collection to add to the program.
“These lines are even slower to break down than Valier,” said Rossnagel.
Valier was first developed from varieties found in the collection in a large trial in 1995. Valier and these new lines store their smaller starch granules differently than traditional varieties.
Peipiang Yu of the U of S department of animal and poultry science studied the structure of the seed using a synchrotron in New York earlier this year. The giant electron tool allowed him to see in fine detail the way the starch was physically stored in the seed.
“We found that Valier stored its small granules (of starch) tightly with its protein, while Harrington stored its (larger granule) where it is immediately available for digestion once it was in the rumen. It just goes too fast,” Yu said.
Plant breeders are now using this information to find seed types that store their starch in a way that allows a longer timed release of its energy, and breed for those characteristics.
“If more of the digestion could occur in the small intestine, that is what we want,” he said.
Breeders also hope to incorporate increased starch and fats into the new variety, further improving its usefulness for cattle feeders.
Racz said barley may face continued economic challenges from corn unless new varieties also have malting characteristics or new feeding strategies are developed to make better use of the old cereal.
“Slow DMD is definitely a step in the right direction, though,” he said.
