Two recently published reports conclude no single investment delivers greater ROI than varietal development. Both were authored by Richard Gray, University of Saskatchewan professor and Canadian Grain Policy Research chair. The barley report was published in July 2021, the wheat report in March of this year.
The improvement of Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance in durum wheat varieties is no easy task, but progress has been made in recent years. Varieties with improved resistance are in the breeding pipeline.
Held in late July of 2019, the Made in Canada Crop Tour was conducted with the co-operation of four industry groups to help create just such barley buy in.
As the recent debut of a new American pale ale called South Side smash revealed, getting to the launch stage with new malt varieties involves critical choices. This beer by Edmonton’s Town Square Brewing Co. is brewed using malt produced by Red Shed Malting and is
the first commercially available beer to feature SeCan’s CDC Bow malting barley.
Barley was once a dominant crop on the Canadian Prairies, with farmers planting nearly 14 million acres of the golden grain in 1971. By 2017, however, the number fell to just under six million acres. Farmers, faced with depressed prices and slowly declining yields, have been switching to more profitable crops.
