The Building Better Barley Podcast: Recent Episodes
Building Better Barley
There is so much exciting research going on right now in the barley world. Unfortunately, we don’t always do a great job of talking about – and especially in ways that break it down for a non-science audience.
Our goal with this podcast is to help change that. We want to keep you up to date on all the exciting, farmer-funded research that is currently taking place and especially how it will impact our industry and farmers.
So thanks for joining us.
Part of the challenge of growing malting barley is managing protein levels in the crop. Malt standards require a specific level of protein in the crop and protein levels can be affected by a number of factors including the use of nitrogen fertilizer and the soil.
Several projects in the current cluster aimed to make our pre-breeding game stronger. As we wrap up the current research, here’s an update on the gains we’ve made in terms of genotyping, phenotyping, DNA markers, pathogen variations, and just breeding generally in these modern times.
As we wrap up the current research cluster, a look at some of the promising new Canadian varieties expected from breeders’ efforts to date/their benefits over previous varieties, and when they might be available to farmers.
Today we are talking about a very interesting topic – malting barley and how specific characteristics of the barley affect the end product – beer! We’re also going to discuss how Canadian malting barley has evolved over the past couple decades to overcome malting challenges and meet growing end-user demands. And we have the Canadian expert on this topic here with us to discuss!
Today we are talking about an exciting area of barley research – barley as feed. When we talk about barley we often think of beer but there’s a strong and growing case for the benefits of barley as animal feed. And the Canadian research industry has long been working on developing that case.
Our guest today is just one of the researchers currently leading a barley cluster project focused on proving the benefits of barley as feed for swine diets.
Today we are talking about how current barley cluster research is aiming to help arm farmers against one the biggest threats to Western Canadian barley crops – disease.
We’ve all heard so much lately about fusarium and its devastating impact on our crops. But there are also a suite of other diseases that, while not as widespread, can be equally harmful. And as our herbicides become more and more rapidly resistant to these diseases, it’s easy to see why disease management and prevention is one of the most critical components of farming today.
This episode we continue our conversation on this topic with Dr. Kelly Turkington, plant pathologist with the Lacombe Research and Development Centre, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, in Lacombe, Alberta.
Today we are talking about how current barley cluster research is aiming to help arm farmers against one the biggest threats to Western Canadian barley crops – disease.
We’ve all heard so much lately about fusarium and its devastating impact on our crops. But there are also a suite of other diseases that, while not as widespread, can be equally harmful. And as our herbicides become more and more rapidly resistant to these diseases, it’s easy to see why disease management and prevention is one of the most critical components of farming today.
This episode we talk with James Tucker, Research Scientist, Barley Genomics at the Brandon Research and Development Centre.
Today’s episode is going to focus specifically on an area we all know about – breeding. New varieties are truly the lifeblood of our industry, because without new and improved varieties, adapted for our growing conditions and rapidly changing environments and markets, we couldn’t stay competitive. That’s why a large portion of barley cluster research is allocated for breeding work.