Grainswest - Winter 2019

Winter 2019 Grains West 24 FEATURE Why is barley yield stagnant and, more importantly, how can its bu/ac be improved? GrainsWest asked four industry experts to weigh in on this critical question. Flavio Capettini Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Field Crop Development Centre head of research, barley breeder, Lacombe, AB GrainsWest: What will it take to get barley yield and agronomic performance in line with other crops? Flavio Capettini: Barley is always the poor cousin when resources are invested, so it will take investment in research at a comparable level to other crops. If you put more money into breeding and research, you’ll get more results. I’ve only been in Canada for five years, but I get the impression that barley breeding had more resources in the past. Barley acres are half of what they were a few years ago, so less is invested in research, but it should be the opposite. If you want to catch up, you need to invest more. As a country, we only invest 1.7 per cent of the agricultural GDP in agricultural research, which is below the commitment of many other developed nations. Clearly, there is room for improvement, and there’s some debate about whether government or industry should fund the research. Private companies usually invest more in short- term, results-oriented objectives, whereas public investment is for the long run, and breeding is a long-term undertaking. Even with advances in biotechnology, it’s hard to have a new variety developed in less than eight years. GW: How urgent is the need to increase barley yield, and what are the barriers? FC: The need is very urgent. We are facing huge challenges with market and demand changes, international competition, climate change and succession planning of scientists. One of the barriers is that decision-makers are challenging crop research without taking a holistic view. There are misconceptions that we have too many barley breeding programs in Western Canada, yet the demands on breeders are greater than ever. In breeding, every time you add more traits you slow down the overall progress. In the case of malting barley, we have craft brewers asking for specific quality profiles, and if we don’t have them in our breeding program we have to start from scratch. Then you have a new disease like Fusarium head blight coming to Alberta and it changes your objectives because you need to breed for resistance now. Every time you add another objective, you slow the progress towards greater yield. GW: How vigorous is the push to increase barley yield in Canada? FC: Increasing yield is the top objective in all breeding programs. That said, yield improvement also depends on agricultural practices that farmers can manage and climatic conditions that they can’t. GW: Describe the work you’re doing to enhance barley yield. FC: We have had a comprehensive barley breeding program for 45 years for all types and uses: feed, forage, malt and food; with increasing the genetic progress on yield our first objective. But in some cases, there are other traits that are the bottleneck for crop acceptance and viability, like malting quality. With a comprehensive research review going on at Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, we hope to continue our work on enhancing the crop and ensuring its viability and competitiveness in Alberta.