Basic barley research

The Grain Research Laboratory's Basic Barley Research program focuses on the chemistry and biochemistry of malting and hulless barley for malting and brewing, as well as for human food purposes. Primary objectives are to identify and characterize factors and molecular mechanisms that are responsible for the functionality and performance of barley during processing and its end-use quality. This strategic research leads to improving quality and processing performance of Canadian barley for current and future needs.

Research

Barley researchers:

• Study molecular characteristics and physicochemical properties of barley components
• Investigate structure and functional properties of carbohydrate components, e.g. starch and dietary fiber constituents from barley and other economically important Prairie grains
• Establish specifications for barley that can predict the quality required by industry
• Respond to needs and priorities of the Canadian malting and brewing and agri-food sector

Research projects include studies of the properties of barley starches that affect their conversion to fermentable sugars, characterization of barley protein by flow field flow fractionation and multi-angle light scattering techniques, development of mass spectrometry techniques for identification and quantification of barley proteins and peptides in beer foam and haze, evaluation of hull-less barley milling fractions for food uses. Another project assesses pre-germination in malting barley by rapid visco-analysis and other methods such as image analysis, near infrared reflectance (NIR) and ethanol emmision to determine whether the degree of pre-germination can be detected and measured by these techniques.