Japanese barley meets Australia: Quality performance of malting barley grown in different countries

Abstract

The aim of this study is to establish whether it is possible to select malting barley showing high quality under Australian conditions on the basis of malting quality data from the crop of the same genotype grown at a breeding station in Japan. Two approaches were taken to analyse the data obtained over several years. The first was a bivariate mixed model used to obtain variety estimates for the various quality traits of interest. The second approach used a univariate mixed model to determine the correlation between the same genotype grown in Australia and Japan, as well as the correlation between the same genotype grown at trial sites within a country. The first analysis found that nitrogen was related to most malting quality traits except for viscosity. The second analysis showed that the performance in Australia and Japan is similar for all malting quality traits. It may therefore be possible to select barley showing high malting quality under Australian conditions on the basis of malting quality data from the Japanese crop of the same genotype.