A record number of new malting barley varieties have been recommended for registration at a time when research funding for the crop remains uncertain.
Some of the varieties have characteristics that are bound to attract the attention of producers when they become commercially available over the next two to four years, including low protein and sprouting resistance.
Fourteen varieties received the green light at the recent annual meeting of the Prairie Grain Development Committee (PGDC) and now await approval from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
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They include three feed varieties (two of them hulless), nine two-row malting varieties and two six-row malting varieties.
“It’s very healthy to have that number of new varieties coming through the system,” said Michael Brophy of the Canadian Wheat Board, chair of the PGDC’s oat and barley committee.
“We’ve seen some things this year that are positive in terms of varieties that address the needs of producers and the industry.”
However, the new varieties are emerging at the same time as funding for malting barley breeding programs is in question.
In 2007, the Alberta government announced it would no longer support malting barley research and would redirect the money toward research on developing triticale varieties for feed and biofuel production and new varieties of feed barley.
Meanwhile, the Western Grains Research Foundation is concerned about the future of the research checkoff it collects from wheat board final payments to barley producers in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
As the volume of barley sold through the CWB declines, so does the amount of money collected through the checkoff for barley breeding. Also, if barley moves to an open market, a new system for collecting the checkoff will have to be devised.
“There’s no question this is a concern for all of us,” said Brian Rossnagel, a barley breeder at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre.
“Even if the CWB situation doesn’t change, we’re seeing a continuing drop in the amount of barley going through the board anyway.”
He said the checkoff provided the CDC’s barley breeding program $355,000 a year from 1994-2004. In the past two years that has dropped to about $300,000.
“The overall problem we have is that barley has replaced oats as the doormat crop in Western Canada.”
Rossnagel said barley doesn’t measure up when most farmers pencil out their cropping options, unless they live next door to a malting plant.
“I guess the bottom line question is whether we should continue to have 10 to 12 million acres of barley grown every year.”
As for the new varieties approved by the PGDC, three of the most intriguing ones come from the CDC:
- A two-row variety with consistently low protein, high yield and good quality, called TRO5104.
“That’s exciting because a major reason samples are turned down by selectors is too high protein,” Rossnagel said.
“We very much hope this variety will increase a producer’s probability of meeting the protein requirement.”
- A two-row variety with low protein, high yield and some sprouting tolerance, called TRO5912.
Rossnagel said this variety will be of particular interest to producers in areas prone to bad harvest weather and to producers forced to seed their crop late.
He said the problem with marketing this variety is that the last thing on farmer’s minds when they’re deciding what to seed is the possibility of a bad harvest.
Barley buyers will have to commit to buying some of this variety every year, even if there is no sprouting problem, so producers will have an incentive to plant it on an ongoing basis.
- A two-row variety with unique brewing qualities to be grown exclusively for Sapporo Breweries of Japan, called TRO6918.
This is the first malting variety in Western Canada with a patented trait for a specific brewery.
It produces beer with a firmer, more stable foam and an extended shelf life.
“This is the first, but I can see it happening more and more down the road,” Rossnagel said.
Another new line called TRO5102 is essentially AC Metcalfe with five percent more yield, better leaf disease resistance and strong straw.
A number of grain companies have expressed interest in carrying this line as an exclusive branded variety.
