AN update on the barley varieties undergoing malt accreditation over the course of this year was provided by Barley Australia at the Grains Industry Association of Western Australia's Barley Forum, held at Crown Perth recently.
A total of seven varieties from three different breeding companies are undergoing stage one trials, three varieties are going through stage two trials, while four new varieties were accepted into the accreditation program in February.
Of the four new varieties accepted into the program, three were from Australian Grain Technologies (AGT) - AGTB0200, AGTB0201 and AGTB0213.
Speaking at the forum, Barley Australia director Jeff Stewart said both AGTB0200 and AGTB0201 were suited to low to moderate rainfall areas.
"AGTB0200 has broad adaptation across the cereal belt and is a La Trobe or Rosalind replacement based on similar characteristics, however it yields better than La Trobe and Spartacus and it's a short compact plant type," Mr Stewart said.
"Whereas AGTB0201 is a sister line to 0200 but its quality profile is more similar to Compass, plus it has a lower fermentability profile.
"AGTB0213 is suited to being in the high rainfall growing areas and has high fermentability, it's a potential replacement for Planet but has better stress tolerance for tight finishes in those growing areas."
The offerings from AGT are complementary to each other as there is not a lot of overlap between them and they're suited to different areas and different brewing styles.
The last variety accepted into the program this year was Commodus CL from InterGrain - a herbicide tolerant variety which agronomically is better suited to lighter soils and is similar in quality profile to Compass.
Stage one of the accreditation program is busy this year, with seven varieties going through the process.
"Laperouse, from SECOBRA Researchers, completed two environments in 2020 but in both instances the modification and extract achieved in malting were on the low side," Mr Stewart said.
"So even though one additional environment was required to complete the requirements from stage one, the Malting and Brewing Industry Barley Technical Committee requested SECOBRA submit two further sites to get a better handle on how it performs."
InterGrain has two varieties going through stage one - IGB1825 which is another of its acid soil tolerant lines with three environments available for evaluation this year - as well as Commodus CL.
"Commodus is herbicide tolerant and is coming straight in - so it was accepted stage zero in February and is going straight into stage one this year," Mr Stewart said.
"That is one of the benefits of the new accreditation system - if a promoter has the material available, they can put two years into one.
"One environment has already been pilot malted and submitted with InterGrain's application, so it only needs to do two more environments which it has material available for this year."
AGT's Beast, AGTB0200 and AGTB0213 all have three environments available for evaluation this year, while AGTB0043 only had one environment evaluated in 2020, but with variable performance, so MBIBTC wants to see another two sites this year which will be evaluated in early 2022.
Stage two of the accreditation program involved commercial scale malting which required much higher tonnes of grain.
GrainSearch's Bottler, Malteurop's Kiwi and InterGrain's Buff all have parcels available for assessment in that process this year.
As well as all of the varieties mentioned, Mr Stewart also reminded those in attendance at the forum that Elders' Alestar, Seednet's Leabrook and InterGrain's Maximum CL were all granted malt accreditation in February.
