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Image courtesy Chocolate Manufacturers
Association.
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From Candy to Brews, Sublette Malting Barley Is
Sublime
By Marcia Wood
December 14, 2006 As every Santa knows, a
gift-wrapped box of chocolate trufflessome filled with rich chocolate
maltmakes a hard-to-resist holiday treat. The malt chosen for creating
these confections might someday come from a barley bred by Agricultural
Research Service (ARS) plant geneticists
and their University of
Idaho colleagues.
Named in honor of William L. Sublette, an early explorer of the American
West, this barley is intended for candymaking, brewing and all of the
traditional malting-barley uses. Tests in Idaho, one of the nation's leading
producers of this crop, have shown that Sublette plants provide a higher
percentage of plump kernelsthe kind maltsters prizethan Harrington
barley, the standard against which all newcomer malting barleys are compared.
That's according to plant geneticist
Donald
E. Obert with the agency's
Small
Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Unit in Aberdeen, Idaho.
Too, Sublette is less likely to topple overcalled lodging--in high
winds or other adverse conditions than the less-sturdy barleys. That means
Sublette doesn't have to be treated with growth-regulating compounds to keep
its size in check and reduce the likelihood of lodging. In turn, doing away
with that treatment saves time and money.
After putting this barley through about a decade of testing, Obert,
now-retired ARS colleagues Darrell M. Wesenberg and Berne L. Jones, along with
University of Idaho co-investigators decided in 2005 that Sublette was ready
for seed companies and growers to try. The scientists documented their research
earlier this year in the journal Crop
Science. Currently, Sublette is in the final stages of intensive,
industry-led brewery tests to determine if it will win the all-important
approval of the American Malting Barley
Association.
Technically known as a two-rowed spring barley, Sublette joins a series of
superior feed, food or malting barleys bred for western U.S. fields by the ARS
researchers at Aberdeen.
ARS is the U.S. Department of
Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.