Clearwater barley, growing here in Tetonia, Idaho,
can help prevent phosphorus pollution of streams and other waterways. Photo
courtesy Phil Bregitzer, ARS. |
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"Clearwater": An Eco-Friendly Feed Barley
By Marcia
Wood June 5, 2008
A new barley that benefits the environment as well as farm
animals has been developed by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists and their colleagues.
"Clearwater" hulless barley is rich in the kinds of phosphorus--an
essential nutrient--that pigs, fish and other single-stomached, or
"monogastric," animals can use. That's unlike grain from conventional barleys,
which contains more of the phytate type of phosphorus, the kind that
monogastric animals find difficult to digest.
Indigestible phosphorus, leached from manure, can sometimes end up
polluting groundwater or streams.
Clearwater builds upon decades of research by plant geneticists
Victor
Raboy,
Phil
Bregitzer and others at the ARS
Small
Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit at Aberdeen, Idaho.
Raboy uses conventional plant-breeding procedures to chemically tweak
seeds' phosphorus makeup. The work has paved the way for low-phytate barleys,
such as Clearwater and a hulled type called "Herald," as well as low-phytate
rice, corn and soybeans.
Bregitzer, Raboy and ARS plant geneticist
Don
Obert collaborated in the Clearwater research with
Idaho Agricultural
Experiment Station co-researchers Juliet Windes and James Whitmore. A
recent article in the Journal of Plant
Registrations contains more details.
Clearwater yields are about the same as those of other niche-market
barleys, according to Bregitzer. One such market--aquaculture feeds--is already
being explored. Approximately 46,000 pounds of Clearwater were shipped to
Vietnam earlier this year by the U.S.
Grains Council of Washington, D.C., and the
Idaho Barley Commission to test
Clearwater as a feed ingredient for farm-raised fish.
ARS researchers at Hagerman, Idaho, and Bozeman, Mont., will begin
similar investigations with farm-raised rainbow trout this month.
The Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station's
Foundation Seed Program at
Kimberly has offered Clearwater seed for sale since late 2007. Researchers and
plant breeders can contact Bregitzer to obtain, at no charge, small supplies of
Clearwater or any of several other feed, food and malting barleys that have
resulted from ARS and Experiment Station barley breeding research.
ARS is a scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.