Feed Barley Research Projects

Check-off dollars key to feed research funding

At 50 cents a tonne (slightly more than a penny a bushel) on a commodity that regularly sells for $175 or more a tonne, barley check-off dollars don’t seem like a lot. But those pennies can add up. In 2006, Alberta farmers reported they produced 4.6 million tonnes of barley. But the Alberta Barley Commission received check-off dollars for just 2.67 million tonnes, about 60 per cent of the annual crop.

“We realize that some farmers grow barley for their own use, but we also estimate that at least $750,000 a year in check-off dollars isn’t submitted,” says Mike Leslie, the Commission’s CEO.

A recent study by the Commission found that as many as two-thirds of feedlot operators in Alberta have not been submitting check-off dollars. Feedlot operators are one of barley’s biggest customers: about 80 per cent of Alberta barley is used for cattle and hog feed. Alberta’s Marketing of Agricultural Products Act mandates that anyone purchasing barley from a producer must deduct check-off dollars from the amount they pay the producer and then forward those check-off dollars to the Commission.

The Commission has launched a campaign to bring the issue of the check-off dollar shortfall to the attention of the feeding industry – and to make it easier for barley buyers to submit checkoff funds. “We’d rather encourage payment than enforce it,” says Leslie, adding, “We’re hoping that by creating awareness about just how important those dollars are to the feed and crop industries, that more funds will be submitted.”

This article is an excerpt from Feed Chain, produced and distributed by the Alberta Barley Commission to feedlot operators across Alberta in March 2008.

The weight could be over for feed barley

Ten years from now you could be buying barley based on its digestible energy content and not its weight alone.

“NIRS can distinguish between starch, protein, fibre and other components,” says plant breeder Dr. Jim Helm. Most of Helm’s 40-year career has been focused on improving the qualities of feed barley. “The big question feeders ask is ‘how does this affect my bottom line?’”

The project is all about finding definitive answers.

“If we’re successful in proving what we believe is the answer, it could be worth billions to the hog and cattle industries.”

Helm has already found that bushel weight/test weight and plumpness have little correlation to the digestible energy an animal gets from feed, and that selecting two-row versus six-row barley does not ensure better feed performance.

“Even though feed barley is getting high prices right now, it’s still not sold on the basis of quality as is done in malting barley,” says Helm. “If we can improve the quality of the 20 per cent of the barley produced for malt, why can’t we do that for the 80 per cent used for feed?”

Turning NIRS into an effective tool, says Helm, requires more research and more cooperation between the crop and livestock industries to define and determine the right kind of barley for livestock – and Alberta’s changing climate.

“Our goal is to give barley feeders varieties that meet their exact needs. Feed is their biggest input cost and we want to provide the most value,” says Albert Wagner, a Stony Plain barley producer and the Commission’s Region 5 director.

This article originally appeared in Feed Chain, produced and distributed by the Alberta Barley Commission to feedlot operators across Alberta in March 2008.

This article originally appeared in Barley Country December 2006

For additional information, see: Potential NIRS Application for Plant Breeding and Production Research

ACIDF announces long-term feed project

ACIDF is seeking an additional $1.5 million in funding from other industry and government partners, to bring the total research investment to $5 million over a period of at least five years. The organization wants to secure long-term support for staffing and infrastructure to increase the molecular support to these two crops. 

The project will focus on improving four aspects of feed barley:

These targets were developed through extensive discussions with livestock feeders, feed manufacturers, ethanol manufacturers, crop growers, researchers and funders across Western Canada throughout the past 18 months.

This project is a combined effort with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Centre in Lacombe, the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon and Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development’s Field Crop Development Centre in Lacombe.

The project will also work with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in Mexico and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria.

Test 42: almost unbelievable results

Rotation, rotation, rotation – that’s one of the key messages behind Test 42, a simple but dramatic research project by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The study convincingly demonstrates that by creating and then closing a healthy canopy, wild oat populations can be effectively managed with less herbicide.

Through a combination of three straightforward agronomic practices – diverse crop rotation (of barley, canola and peas), higher-than-normal seeding rates and competitive varieties – producers can significantly reduce wild oat populations and input costs.

Still ongoing, Test 42 produced such impressive results that findings were released in the sixth year of the eight-year project.

“We’ve gotten some pretty spectacular wild oat data,” says Neil Harker, a weed scientist and researcher at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lacombe Research Centre.

“We’ve seen incredible effects using low rates of herbicide to decrease populations of wild oats.”

Test 42 was conducted on 4m x 15m plots; four-year rotations of barley (in years one and three), canola (in year two) and peas (in year four) were compared to continuous plantings of barley. Normal seeding rates (200 seed/m2) were compared to doubled rates (400 seeds/m2) and researchers grew tall (AC Bacon or AC Lacombe) or short (Peregrine or Vivar) barley varieties at three federal research centres in Western Canada: Lacombe, Beaverlodge and Brandon.

After five years of optimal practices on the same plots, Test 42 showed that doubling the seeding rate reduced the wild oats biomass by almost 300 per cent; tall barley varieties had half the rate of wild oats as short varieties. Using a tall barley variety and doubling the seeding rate resulted in eight times less wild oat biomass.

When three of the study variables (crop rotation, tall barley variety and double seeding rate) were combined, researchers saw a 70-fold reduction in wild oat biomass (65 kilograms/hectare compared to 4,530 kg/ha). Another important factor in Test 42 was the use of direct seeding, which prevents wild oat seeds from being buried and persisting in dormant seed banks.

“It sounds really simple,” says Harker, “but most people hadn’t put the whole package together before – they’ve tended to do one thing or the other.”

In fact, many people have a hard time believing the simplicity of Test 42’s findings. To this Harker says: “The best solutions are simple. Good agronomy is about putting together what you know. Almost all farmers know these things are good but many weren’t combining them.”

“We rarely have experiments that produce results of this magnitude,” says Harker. For further information about Test 42, contact Neil Harker at (403) 782-8134 or harkerk@agr.gc.ca.

This article originally appeared in Barley Country March 2007

Welcome news on fusarium head blight

A three-year research program found in 2006 that feedlot manure is not a source of fusarium inoculum.

The Alberta barley Commission did not directly fund this project, but did play a significant role in coordinating it with the Canadian Wheat Board, the Alberta Crop Industry Development Fund Ltd. (ACIDF), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Western Grains Research Foundation.

The cereal crop disease fusarium head blight (FHB), caused by Fusarium gramineareum, costs Manitoba farmers about $50 million a year, estimates the Manitoba Rural Adaptation Council. This staggering amount includes lower crop revenues due to quality downgrades, and livestock losses (especially swine) from consumption of fusarium-infected grain.

Once mainly confined to Manitoba and the northern U.S. Plains, FHB has gained a substantial foothold in Saskatchewan, prompting Alberta producers to ask: could FHB take hold here? Alberta's climate – typically much drier than the eastern Prairies – provides one line of defence but does not completely safeguard Alberta producers.

Alberta's 2003 and 2004 droughts forced feedlot operators to import more grain than normal from Manitoba and the northern U.S., some of it infected with fusarium. This raised concerns that FHB could be transmitted to Alberta via feedlot manure. Three years ago, ACIDF Ltd. initiated and funded a landmark study to find out if it could.

Researchers designed the project to examine the viability of fusarium gramineareum at various points in the digestive system of cattle. The intent was to determine if and where fusarium is killed. Scientists at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Lethbridge Research Centre and Brandon Research Centre studied close to 200 cattle to come up with the answers. Most were fed fusarium-infected barley, while small numbers had infected barley introduced directly into their rumen and digestive tract.

The conclusion? “The survival of fusarium was virtually zero,” says Dr. Tim McAllister of the Lethbridge Research Centre. “So, we don't see feedlot manure as a source of fusarium inoculum.”

He adds that the presence of fusarium had no impact on the digestibility of the barley, or on the growth performance of cattle to which it was fed.

At what point in the digestive process is the fusarium killed? Drs. Shannon Scott and Debra McLaren of the Brandon Research Centre, pinpointed where fusarium is killed in the digestive process.

“When we incubated barley in the rumen, after several hours the viability of the Fusarium was reduced,” Scott says, “and none survived past 12 hours.” In cattle, the digestive process takes between 24 to 48 hours, depending on feed type. “Even when we placed kernels of barley directly in manure, the viability goes down very quickly,” says Scott. “We observed that, as it goes through the animal, the fusarium can't compete with other organisms that are present.”

This is good news for producers in Alberta, says Mike Leslie, CEO of the Alberta Barley Commission. “We were concerned that fusarium could be coming into Alberta with imported feed, and going out in the manure,” says Leslie. “It's important that we understand how exactly it's being transmitted.”

“We still have concerns about fusarium being transmitted via wind-blown spores from infected grain,” he says. “Hopefully, we can keep ahead of it.”

As of May 2008, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development considered Alberta free of any outbreak of fusarium head blight. For more information, refer to the Alberta Fusarium graminearum Management Plan.

Additional feed barley projects

The Alberta Barley Commission also provides funds for the following feed barley research projects: