The need for barley breeders to focus on creating new varieties specifically for distillers is paramount, a conference has been told.
Distilling now accounts for more than half the malting barley use and using all the tools available to get the right varieties and management practices to support the characteristics needed by the whisky trade was crucial, the James Hutton Institute-organised event heard.
Independent malting consultant Philip Morrall said that with both beer production and malt export down in recent years, getting it right for the distilling side was becoming increasingly important. Distilling had in 1988 accounted for less than 30% of malting barley use.
Jeremy Stephens, spirit and process quality manager with Morrison Bowmore Distillers, said that recent world-wide growth in whisky sales saw exports grow to £4.3billion in 2012, standing behind only oil and gas as the country’s chief generator of external income.
Mr Stephens said that spirit production had been helped in recent years by new technologies and new varieties. He added: “It’s only a few years ago that the yield was between 405 and 410 litres per tonne of malted barley but that figure rose to 420 litres in 2012, partly as a result of varietal improvements.”
But he indicated that research to maintain this performance was needed as even a small reduction in this conversion figure – which could be caused by factors such as this year’s higher nitrogen levels in malting barley – could have a significant impact on both profitability and overall production levels.
Mr Morrall echoed the plea. Barley costs accounted for between 65-75% of all costs for companies that sold malt rather than whisky, and using science to identify and improve the agronomic factors that allowed the maltsters to maximise the yield and quality of malt from each tonne of barley was crucial.
The energy requirements for producing fertilisers – and the greenhouse gases which could be released during its use – together with the carbon dioxide costs of crop protection chemicals, and fuel used for cultivation, harvesting and drying were, according to Mr Morrall, all likely to come under increasing pressure in the future.
But research was already under way on this issue. Hutton researcher Cathy Hawes gave some early results from a field-scale trial covering 103 acres put over to a sustainable cropping system. She said that on a low-input rotation consisting of spring barley, beans, winter barley, oilseed rape, wheat and potatoes there had been a range of yields – but only winter wheat had shown yields that were consistently lower.