01/23/07 New barley varieties

Its taken years of work, research and study but a new two row malt barley variety is showing potential. Don Obert, an ARS grain breeder at Aberdeen says Sublette compares favorably to Idaho's most popular barley, Harrington. But it takes years and years of work to even get to a point where researchers can produce a variety that performs well in field tests. Obert says the American Malting Barley Association works with individual breeders. OBERT "Basically each breeder can test three lines per year at multiple locations and they take the barley from multiple locations each year and they work, AMBA works, among their members to take this barley and malt it and to test the quality parameters on this." If a variety makes it through three years of the pilot scale testing which involves malting 20 pounds of barley, AMBA will approach its members and ask if any of them want to continue for another three years but on a large scale basis. OBERT "The first three years we look for 20 pounds of barley and after that they ramp it up to look at 30 thousand bushels." Seed growers and farmers are continuing their testing of Sublette barley in hopes that it will soon get industry approval. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott