Australia: A new form of DNA testing for barley may make your beer taste even better

The new test has been developed to make sure the variety of barley that farmers plant is pure, thereby providing better quality barley for malting, ABC.net posted on June 18..

Trials are underway in the Esperance region of Western Australia. Local wheat grower, Nigel Metz, says the new testing involves several universities and groups around the country.

"At the moment, we're simply just combing the samples that farmers are sending in, he says."So I'd envisage that we'd be having samples dispatched off by the September mark, and we'd have results prior to harvest. "This is a free service to the growers and that's simply because we're testing the technology."

19 June, 2008