It’s a disappointment when barley intended for the malt house winds up in the feed market because it doesn’t meet maltsters’ strict specifications. It’s why many growers have given up on barley altogether — malt premiums are hard to attain while feed barley yields don’t offer the revenue of competing crops.
But some researchers have been working overtime to keep barley — particularly feed barley — on producers’ radar. One question on their minds is whether malt barley varieties could do a better job of producing higher yields of feed barley than feed cultivars themselves.
A recently completed study set out to answer two questions: “Can barley producers use malt varieties to drive higher feed barley yield?” and “Does a new-to-Canada plant growth regulator (PGR) reduce lodging to any significant degree?”
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The answers are, respectively, “Not likely” and “That depends.”
Those were the takeaways of a two-season, six site-year research project led by Lakeland College in Vermilion, Alta., over the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons.
The researchers compared the yield of three malt barley varieties against a commonly recognized feed cultivar. The crops were tested under two different nitrogen fertilizer regimes and in all instances with and without a PGR.
Fertilizing malt barley with higher nitrogen rates is an unusual move because N creates protein, and that’s not something maltsters want much of in their product, says Laurel Thompson, project lead.
“Historically, these malt barley varieties are not managed with high nitrogen rates compared to what we would see in feed barley varieties. We said ‘Let’s look at growing a few malt barley varieties under comparable nitrogen rates to what we would see in feed barley production.’”
Even without higher N, a downside of growing barley is its tendency to lodge. That’s why the study included applications of Moddus, a PGR recently registered in Canada for use on barley. PGRs are designed to reduce plant stem elongation, giving the plant the chance to develop a thicker, sturdier base. Developers claim this makes plants less prone to lodging.
A rotation option
This project is one of many that have been looking at ways to renew barley’s popularity. The crop has lost a lot of acreage, with only 7.1 million seeded acres in 2021 compared to almost 13 million in the mid-1990s. That’s meant less interest by plant breeders in developing new varieties. Barley yield has increased at only one-third the rate of red spring wheat yield in the past two decades.
Another impediment is that the malting industry has taken an “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach which favours sticking with older proven varieties at the expense of new cultivars with improved yield and agronomic characteristics.
These are cycles that researchers like Thompson would like to see end, which is why there has been a greater focus on improving feed barley yield.
“We’re looking for ways to increase the yield of feed barley because that’s where most of the barley actually ends up,” Thompson says. “(We want to see) how we can increase the yields of feed barley to make it more economically attractive to growers.”
That would help barley play a role in containing clubroot infection in canola.
“Barley is one of the really important options to diversify our crop rotation away from shorter wheat- and canola-type rotations,” she says.
Austenson tops yield
The project was conducted at three locations in Alberta: Vermilion (central-east), Barrhead (central-west) and Lethbridge (south), which was the only one grown under irrigation.
Researchers Sheri Strydhorst and Doon Pauly, at the time with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, conducted the Barrhead and Lethbridge sites, respectively.
The yields of three malt varieties (CDC Copeland, AAC Synergy and CDC Bow) were compared to CDC Austenson, which acted as a well-known and high-yielding feed barley check.
Nitrogen was side-banded with either 80 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare or 140 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare. Each of those subsets was further divided into plots treated with Moddus as well as an untreated control.
The biggest news from this side of the project is that CDC Austenson — a feed barley that’s been on the market for about a decade — equalled or beat the malt barleys in every site-year regardless of N rate or PGR treatment.
“What we found in a nice little nutshell from all these treatments is that CDC Austenson was among the highest-yielding varieties at all of the site-years by an average of 7.1 per cent more yield compared to the malt cultivars,” Thompson says.
This is not to say that the malt cultivars yielded poorly — just not well enough to justify a switch.
“In 2019, CDC Austenson tended to be the highest-yielding at all three sites, with CDC Copeland statistically similar in yield to CDC Austenson at Lethbridge,” Thompson says.
“At Vermilion in 2020, CDC Austenson (feed) and AAC Synergy (malt) were the highest-yielding cultivars. This data indicates that in four of six site-years, one or more malt cultivars yielded as well as, but not higher than the benchmark feed check.”
The researchers also looked at fertilizer response, with the higher rate of 140 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare making the biggest yield difference.
“At four of the six site-years where we saw a response to nitrogen, the higher nitrogen rate resulted in an up to 16 per cent yield increase over the lower nitrogen fertilizer rate,” Thompson says, who emphasizes the importance of basing nitrogen fertilizer rates on soil test results and yield goals.
PGR helps mild lodging
Moddus’s ability to eliminate or minimize lodging depended on severity.
“We actually had a nice array of lodging severity in the study, ranging from very, very mild lodging to severe,” Thompson says.
“Moddus was able to reduce but not eliminate lodging in our moderate lodging situations. When lodging was severe, Moddus was not able to assist in a significant way. However, it could eliminate lodging when lodging pressure was very mild.”
The PGR drove a positive yield effect on some sites.
“We found a positive yield response to the Moddus PGR about half the time — an average yield increase of 4.2 per cent compared to the untreated control at the sites where we saw the positive response.”
Thompson emphasizes that the project took place over two growing seasons that were relatively free of environmental stress. Those yield advantages may not have held in the extremely dry conditions of 2021. This is the first year Moddus was widely available to farmers and in many cases, the barley was short enough already, reducing the need for a PGR.
There have been some unfavourable anecdotal Twitter reports about Moddus. Thompson won’t speculate on whether any problems were tied directly to the PGR, but emphasizes the warning on the label.
“On the Moddus label there is a caution not to spray during stressful conditions. Maybe stressful conditions that followed the spring application caused these reports. I can’t speak to them personally as I haven’t been out in those fields.”
The use of a PGR did not create any quality problems. The research team checked the resulting malt barley for 11 chemical characteristics maltsters tend to focus on — such as wort, alpha-amylase and beta glucan levels — and found no negative effects. However, growers should still do due diligence before using a PGR on their malt barley, Thompson says.
“Before barley growers spray Moddus on their malt barley they should be checking with their malt end-users first because the acceptance of PGRs is still up to the end-users. So even though Moddus is registered for use in malt barley in Western Canada, not all malt houses are necessarily going to accept it, so just check.”
