Grainswest - Winter 2019

Winter 2019 grainswest.com 27 Aaron Beattie University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre (CDC) associate professor, Ministry of Agriculture and Strategic Research Program chair in barley and oat breed- ing genetics, Saskatoon, SK GrainsWest: What will it take to get barley yield and agronomic performance in line with other crops? Aaron Beattie: Our program strategy has been successful bringing in germplasm from other parts of the world that may give us continual yield increases. A lot of European material has a different source of genetics that can complement our efforts. It’s also critical to make disease resistance a priority. Improving yield by a couple of percentage points every few years is significant, but you can easily lose more than that to disease, so resistance allows us to protect those yield gains. GW: How urgent is the need to increase barley yield and what are the barriers? AB: Urgency is high as farmers are at the end of their rope in dealing with older varieties. There needs to be coordination among [the marketing strategies of seed companies, pilot testing by maltsters and the brewers] and more sharing of who is doing what and how varieties are working. If we can get new varieties into a “yes” or “no” category quickly and have the “yes” ones replace older varieties sooner, we can have them out to growers in a more timely manner. GW: Describe the work you’re doing to enhance barley yield. AB: The other big component of barley yield is lodging resistance. In general, barley has been one of the poorer performing crops in that respect, so we’ve really pushed that trait, and the new varieties are showing improved lodging resistance. If crops are lying on the ground for several weeks, your yield and quality will go out the door, but the new higher- yielding lines should be standing up better to improve ease of harvest and maintain quality. Though there’s much work to be done, the positive outlook that many see for barley demand may drive greater efforts at enhancing yield. I’m pretty positive about barley’s place in agriculture for Western Canada. We talk about the decline in acres but that seems to have hit a plateau, and there are reasons for optimism. The craft brewing industry is a rapidly growing segment of the beer market. They use more malt per unit of beer than the larger breweries, so more malt will be needed to service them as their numbers grow. Then there is a big export market like China where they are developing a higher-end beer market and thus buying more malt. There are also signals that China might be interested in developing a more consistent feed market and buying more feed barley from Canada. These are all encouraging signs that barley demand will remain strong in the future. If that demand is accompanied by yield improvement, it could be a big win for farmers and industry.