Western Australia
August 14, 2008
Western Australian barley growers,
especially those on the south coast, are set to play key roles
safeguarding the quality and reputation of Australia’s malting
barley and therefore its value.
A new project by the South East Premium Wheatgrowers Association
(SEPWA), jointly funded by the
Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the
Department of Agriculture
and Food WA (DAFWA), with support from CBH, will trial
implementation of grower based variety purity testing.
Using new technology to provide indicative industry benchmarks,
the methodology will be tested for sample throughput,
reliability and repeatability.
 This benchmarking covers grower seed for sowing – both farmer
saved and bought, tissue samples from the field and harvested
grain in the Esperance port zone, as well as from other sources
across WA.
With world demand for malt barley increasing at six to nine per
cent per year, GRDC Manager, New Products, Paul Meibusch said it
was essential that Australia maintain its hard won international
reputation as a reliable exporter of quality barley.
Mr Meibusch stressed that purity of malting barley varieties was
vital to the malting industry for performance efficiency in the
malting process.
“Australia has strict receival standards that dictate malting
barley must be varietally pure and that it is to be stored in
separate stacks on a variety-by-variety basis,” he said.
SEPWA Project Co-ordinator, Nigel Metz (photo), indicated the GRDC
supported project was an important pro-active step to engage
growers at the production level.
“We want to engage grower interest in the topic of malting
barley variety purity as an overall grain quality
characteristic, rather than forcing them into prescriptive
action as a result of feedback from marketers in the future,” he
said.
“Project results will be presented to industry and contribute to
designing a national approach to varietal purity in malting
barley.
“Testing at the farm level will also lead to integration into
existing QA systems, such as the Better Farm IQ program, which
is a step toward a whole supply chain variety testing from
barley breeder to brew-house,” Mr Metz said. |
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