Australia: New barley variety achieves final malt and brewing accreditation
InterGrain's barley variety Bass achieved its much anticipated final malt and brewing accreditation, Farm Weekly reported on April, 13.
Formerly known as WABAR2315, Bass will offer Western Australia growers a premium malt barley alternative to Baudin, making it perfectly suited to the State's export malt markets.
In trials the variety displayed extract, fermentability, diastase and modification comparable to Baudin but boasted significant disease improvements, including improved powdery mildew and leaf rust resistance over the same variety.
It also showed excellent sprouting tolerance and yield advantages over Baudin of more than eight per cent.
According to InterGrain barley breeder Reg Lance, Bass was also tipped to have the best grain plumpness of any elite malting variety in Australia.
In regions targeted for its release, the yield of Bass is comparable to that of Commander, a variety recognised as one of the higher yielding current malting varieties.
Mr Lance said Bass was also considered to be taller than Baudin, yet shorter than Vlamingh and offered good straw strength, lodging resistance and solid head retention.
"InterGrain is delighted with the interest received in Bass so far," Mr Lance said.
"Due to the limited quantity of seed available InterGrain has prioritised seed sales to a small number of regional areas at the moment.
"These regional areas will be in the Esperance, Albany and Kwinana port zones.
"The Esperance and Albany zones will be primarily for seed bulk-up and no segregation will be available but there will be a small segregation at a strategic location within the Kwinana zone."
InterGrain's commercial manager Tress Walmsley said achieving malt accreditation for a new barley variety was an excellent result and with Bass in-hand, InterGrain would continue its careful planning and co-ordination of international market development.
"Bass is best suited as a premium export variety and InterGrain is working closely with CBH Grain to ensure the quantity of the initial grain production in 2012 and 2013 matches end user demand," Ms Walmsley said.
Ms Walmsley explained that InterGrain was continuing to work with domestic maltsters, Viterra Malt, Barrett Burston Maltings and Malteurop because they had also established international markets for a Baudin-quality variety.
CBH barley marketing manager Rob Dickie said CBH had been closely involved with Bass's accreditation process from the early stages and in addition, the co-operative had continued informal promotion of the variety to its Asian malting and brewing customers.
"Now that Bass has been accredited CBH Grain will continue with its international promotion of Bass through the supply of commercial quantities of grain for both micro and commercial malting and brewing tests, as well as technical support which will result in new market development and beneficial industry feedback," Mr Dickie said.
Bass comes from InterGrain's barley breeding program, the same program that gave Australia Baudin, the variety which revolutionised malting quality for the Australian barley industry and become an international benchmark for quality in export markets.
18 April, 2012
