AN INNOVATIVE barley breeding project currently underway could have the potential to turn the Scottish barley industry on its head.

The £2m Impromalt project, which is being led by the James Hutton Institute, in Dundee, is looking at weaning the industry away from its reliance on spring barley, to winter barley.

Its aim is to introduce the special malting characteristics found in spring barley – some of which are not found in their winter relatives – into winter barley varieties by conventional cross-breeding techniques. This could revolutionise the distilling/brewing trade in Scotland and bring considerable benefits to growers.

“It’s all about barrels per acre,” pointed out Dr Bill Thomas, of JHI, who is leading the project. “Reliance on spring barley has come about because of its known spirit yield, its yield in terms of litres per acre and winter barley has never been able to reproduce that, despite having much higher yields than spring crops.

“What we can now do, following the knowledge we now have of the DNA of barley, is to be much more precise as to where we introduce the specific genes which make spring barley special in terms of its malting ability.”

DNA mapping has pinpointed the exact chromosome that the breeders need to introduce the specific ‘malting genetics’ – which centre around special enzymes which only spring barley produces – into winter barley types.

As part of the project, JHI has joined forces with six major breeding companies to expand the width of the project, which could bear some fruit as early as 2017/18, when micro-malting trials could take place. The first crop is already in the ground and multiplication trials set for next year and then assessment by maltsters can be made after that.

But it won’t be a quick fix, pointed out Dr Thomas. “By 2018, we might be lucky and have some material to work with, but it’s more likely going to be another three or four years after that before we hit on anything that might prove useful,” he said.

Overture is the spring barley being used as a ‘parent’ in the JHI trails, with a spread of winter barley varieties being selected by the institute and the breeding partners, including SY Venture and KWS Joy, with one breeder even trying to cross-breed the genes into a six-row.

For growers, the benefits are obvious – higher yields, much earlier harvest (hence an early start to subsequent crops), and not having to rely on catchy spring weather, as has been the case this year, to establish a spring crop.

Maltsters may be more difficult to persuade, though, and Dr Thomas acknowledged this to be the case: “It will be a challenge, but we can show that there will be distinct benefits from using winter crops, such as a reduced carbon footprint.”