AAC Prairie: a new two-row malting barley for the mainstream brewing industry

Canada is one of the world's largest producers and suppliers of malting barley and malt to the global marketplace. To support this industry and stay competitive, a new stream of barley cultivars is continuously required to address higher yield demands, disease threats that continue to evolve at a rapid rate and affect production and grain quality, as well as ongoing changes in quality characteristics required by the industry. In general, beer is produced from malted barley, although other malted or unmalted cereals, called adjuncts, are also used in association with it. The barley used in combination with these adjuncts has a special malting quality profile.
At Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Brandon Research and Development Centre (AAFC-BRDC), Manitoba, Canada, a new two-row malting barley cultivar, AAC Prairie (TR17255), was developed and recently released. This is a promising barley variety developed from the cross CDC Kindersley/TR08204 with a very attractive malting quality profile intended for the mainstream/adjunct brewing industry. Based on two years (2017 and 2018) of testing in the Western Two-row Barley Cooperative Registration Test, it has demonstrated good adaptability across western Canada combined with good agronomic performance (5% higher yield than AC Metcalfe check) and physical grain quality (good plumpness, test weight and kernel weight) as well as a good disease resistance package (moderate resistance to surface-borne smuts, stem rust and net-form net blotch, and intermediate resistance to Fusarium Head Blight (FHB) and spot blotch). Moreover, AAC Prairie has displayed a desirable malting quality profile with higher fine extract and alpha-amylase and lower beta-glucan and viscosity than all malting checks, AC Metcalfe, CDC Copeland and AAC Synergy. The soluble protein and FAN levels were similar to AC Metcalfe, while friability was higher than AC Metcalfe and AAC Synergy. These malting quality traits were confirmed during the two years (2018 and 2019) of assessment in the Collaborative Malting Quality Trial conducted by Brewing and Malting Barley Research Institute and preliminary large-scale testing conducted by Canadian Malting Barley Technical Centre. In summary, AAC Prairie is an improved two-row malting barley cultivar that has a good combination of agronomic traits, disease resistance and a promising malting quality profile.