A new project by the WA South-East Premium Wheatgrowers Association (SEPWA), jointly funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) and the Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA), with support from CBH, will trial implementation of grower based variety purity testing.

Using new technology to provide indicative industry benchmarks, the methodology will be tested for sample throughput, reliability and repeatability.

This benchmarking covers grower seed for sowing – both farmer saved and bought, tissue samples from the field and harvested grain in the Esperance port zone, as well as from other sources across WA.

With world demand for malt barley increasing at six to nine per cent per year, GRDC Manager, New Products, Paul Meibusch said it was essential that Australia maintain its hard won international reputation as a reliable exporter of quality barley.

Mr Meibusch stressed that purity of malting barley varieties is vital to the malting industry for performance efficiency in the malting process.

“Australia has strict receival standards that dictate malting barley must be varietally pure and that it is to be stored in separate stacks on a variety-by-variety basis,” he said.

SEPWA Project Co-ordinator, Nigel Metz, indicated the GRDC supported project was an important step to engage growers at the production level.

“We want to engage grower interest in the topic of malting barley variety purity as an overall grain quality characteristic, rather than forcing them into prescriptive action as a result of feedback from marketers in the future,” he said.

“Project results will be presented to industry and contribute to designing a national approach to varietal purity in malting barley.

“Testing at the farm level will also lead to integration into existing QA systems, such as the Better Farm IQ program, which is a step toward a whole supply chain variety testing from barley breeder to brew-house,” Mr Metz said.