Exciting new contenders are lining up to challenge the dominance of the leading varieties that take up a huge proportion of the malting barley market.

One such is Firefoxx, which is an early maturing spring malting barley with high yields, a strong all-around disease package and very low grain skinning. Crucially, it recently received support from Paul Huntley, cereal seeds director at Simpsons Malt.

Mr Huntley, who has followed the variety’s progress closely through trials and grower evaluation reports since spring 2020, believed the variety, bred by Elsoms-Ackermann Barley, has the potential to be a key future variety in the Scottish distilling market.

“Beyond being a very visually attractive barley, Firefoxx has a strong agronomic package that stands up well to the Scottish weather. In the field, our growers found it was earlier to harvest than competitor varieties such as Tungsten, Laureate and Diablo – a valuable trait that becomes more attractive the further north you go.

“Those who grew Firefoxx last year were very pleased with its consistent on-farm performance, achieving very respectable yields, and they have all signed up to grow it again this year. Its overall grain quality is consistently very good – and, in our experience, it has had no issues with screenings or skinning in the last two years.

“Simpsons Malt have been and continue to be, involved with the ongoing macro-scale malting evaluation of Firefoxx, in conjunction with our distilling partners such as Chivas Brothers, Highland Distillers and Dewars. The relative success in the Scottish distilling market of previous varieties, such as KWS Sassy, illustrated that there is a potential niche in the market for a distilling-only variety, one which Firefoxx has the potential to fulfil in the future,” confirmed Mr Huntley.

Endorsing that agronomic assessment of the variety, Arable farmer, Colin McGregor, based near Dunning, in Perthshire, decided to switch all his spring barley area over to Firefoxx for 2022, based on a combination of yield performance and grain quality.

“Firefoxx averaged at least 1t/ha more than the other mainstream malting variety we grew last year," he said. “It stood well at harvest, and there were no issues of brackling when bad weather delayed cutting.

"Overall grain quality was excellent, with all the spring barley meeting malting specification. Grain nitrogen levels were very low, bushel weights were good, and skinning was not an issue – testing below 1% at intake.

“For spring drilling, we’ve decided to drop our other malting barleys and go with Firefoxx as the solus variety across all our spring barley acreage,” said Mr McGregor.

George Goodwin, the vining pea and combinable crop manager at Spalding-based breeder, Elsoms Seeds (which markets Firefoxx), is confident that it will become the next big distilling-only variety based on its early maturity, consistently high yields, low screening and its trait of being significantly less prone to skinning.

“When you analyse the key ADHB statistics for spring malting barley varieties, Firefoxx had the highest equal fungicide-treated yield in the North at 104%, and its overall disease package is comparable with all the leading malting varieties. On average skinnings, though, it’s certainly ahead, with an average of 2.9% against a control of Laureate, Diablo, Planet and Concerto at about 5%.

“On maturity, it was reclassified from a +1 to zero days, the same as Planet – but earlier than Tungsten, Laureate and Diablo on the latest AHDB Recommended List. This upgrading supports the findings of Simpsons Malt, based on grower reports from last season.

“With large-scale commercial evaluation trials underway again this spring, seed availability for 2022 should meet both grower and Industry demand,” he concluded.