The Saskatchewan Barley Development Commission (SaskBarley) is committing $856,651 towards barley research over the next five years.

Research and Extension Manager with SaskBarley Mitchell Japp says the research will focus on areas of concern for barley growers in the province, such as “managing maturity and uniformity in barley, crop establishment, disease pressure, and marketability” adding these projects are happening across the province.

SaskBarley also notes ultra-early seeding of barley, optimum seeding rates, seedling survivability, and testing mycotoxins – which are naturally occurring toxins produced by moulds that can grow on different crops – are other things being researched.

Uniform maturity in barley, Japp says, is one of the ongoing challenges producers face. “It can be limiting as to when you’re harvesting a crop – it needed to be consistently dried down, consistent maturity – and it also presents an issue when you’re managing for diseases like fusarium head blight.” he said. “Having tools to manage that uniformity throughout the growing season will benefit growers both at harvest as well as fusarium 

management because that fungicide application timing is pretty critical, and to be able to get most of the heads covered in one pass with the fungicide, that timing is critical to managing that disease well.”

The announcement adds to the 40 other current research projects funded by SaskBarley. The projects supported were reviewed and funded in collaboration with the Agriculture Funding Consortium (AFC).

“We are putting dollars behind research projects that benefit Saskatchewan barley growers,” says SaskBarley Chair, Cody Glenn in a news release. “These initiatives will help ensure barley remains a competitive crop choice for producers and a premium product for customers here and around the globe.”