Overcomes barriers to multi-trillion market for milling wheat products, offering all the processing attributes of wheat with dramatically higher dietary fibre.

Researchers have achieved a new wheat to make Canada proud.

Don't call it a comeback, but the humble barley grain has quietly moved to the centre of tremendous future potential in agriculture.

Health-conscious markets? Barley has high levels of beta-glucan - a fibre that has been linked to heart health and cancer prevention. The grain also has several unique anti-oxidants, and a dietary fibre content that dwarfs that of wheat.

Innovation? Barley genetics contain a broad range of starch profiles, allowing applications for livestock feed, malting and brewing, human food and industrial products.

Farmer fit? Canadian farmers are arguably the best barley producers in the world. The grain is uniquely suited to production in Western Canada and has well established markets underpinning the domestic cattle industry and strong international malting and brewing markets.

Now, thanks to research advances funded in part by farmers themselves through Western Grains Research Foundation (WGRF), perhaps the greatest potential has arrived on barley's doorstep.

Canadian barley researchers have registered a new barley variety, "Millhouse," the first in a series that paves the way for barley's inclusion in the multi-trillion dollar global market for the products of milling wheat.

North American first

"Millhouse is the first true milling barley for Canada," says Dr. Mario Therrien (photo) of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Brandon Research Centre, who bred Millhouse.

"Millhouse is bred to complement wheat for milling purposes, with the advantage that it provides more dietary fibre than wheat could ever provide," he says. "Of course, it also provides all the other unique health benefits of barley. All these benefits have always been there but now we know more about them and how to take advantage of them to provide greatly enhanced products for consumers."

Therrien discussed Millhouse and the potential it represents with Western Grains Research Magazine.

Q: How does Millhouse overcome the milling product barrier for barley?

A: What you need for a milling barley is a kind of starch that is similar to wheat in its water-absorbing properties. That's what we've aimed for with Millhouse.

This variety contains the right kind of starch and protein profile that is compatible with wheat. This allows the barley flour it produces to be blended with wheat flour, without creating any problems for the miller.

The idea is not to replace wheat flour altogether in the product, but to allow for these blends to be produced. The barley imparts the dietary fibre that the wheat lacks, along with barley's other unique health-enhancing benefits, so you get a better product.

Q: What types of products can milled barley be used for?

A: All products produced with wheat flour can include a portion of flour from barley varieties like Millhouse. Obviously a major market is the bread market. By adding barley flour to the wheat flour mix, you can create a product that has much higher dietary fibre. In blends involving up to 40 percent barley flour, you can double the dietary fibre content from that of a conventional wheat loaf.

There's also potential for a noodle stream. Barley contains a specialized starch that allows for the formation of noodles and noodle-like products. The barley starch doesn't have any gluten, so you can make a noodle-like product that is gluten free, which is good for people who are gluten-intolerant.

Just like in the bread scenario, you could blend the barley-based flour with wheat-based flour to make a noodle product that is indistinguishable from a 100 percent wheat-based noodle product, except the dietary fibre and other benefits can be dramatically higher.

Q: Where does Millhouse fit in the evolution of the breeding effort?

A: Millhouse is the first variety in a second stream of western Canadian barley varieties bred for use in food products. The varieties in the first stream were developed by Dr. Brian Rossnagel and Dr. Ron Bhatty at the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre, which provided an important stepping stone to our work on Millhouse.

We work closely with the U of S program on the food barley effort. Over the next decade, our tentative plan is to compliment the food barley development effort. The U of S program will continue to focus on "waxy" barley varieties, which have a starch profile designed to produce tortillas, taco chips and similar products. Rossnagel developed the first major waxy barley for Western Canada in CDC Candle, and followed that up with several hulless waxy barley varieties such as CDC Alamo, CDC Fibar and CDC Rattan. All are high in beta glucan and appeal to the pharmaceutical and nutraceutical foods markets.

At Brandon, our focus will continue on non-waxy food barleys like Millhouse, which are targeted at the baked wheat product industry.

Q: What are the challenges to commercial adoption of milling barley?

A: With Millhouse, we have a good variety and there will be more on the way over the next several years.

These varieties have removed a key problem that barley had in the past when trying to blend it into other products. Specifically, there was a graying of the product, because of some unusual oxidation in the baking process. That's now been dealt with, along with some blending inconsistency problems.

One of the first things we did with Millhouse was to mill it and to put it through some of these advanced pre-processing regimens, so we know it performs well.

With that breeding progress, the focus now really shifts to marketing. The millers are similar to maltsters and brewers in that they are a very conservative group and it will likely take a while to make them comfortable with adding a new flour source to what they're used to. But we're confident the advantages will be recognized.

Q: What about consumers? Are they clueing in to the health advantages of barley?

A: Consumer awareness is in an early stage, but that will change as barley makes further inroads in food products. One thing we're all following closely is the effort in the U.S. to get a "Heart Smart" designation for barley, which allows products containing a certain amount of barley to include a Heart Smart label indicating its enhanced health value. That obviously would be a huge selling point.

We don't have the Heart Smart program in Canada, but there are several lobby groups here trying to get something similar implemented.

But even without a designation like that, eventually consumers will figure out the health advantages of barley. For example, when you look at a label and see the dietary fibre in a barley-based product at 17.5 percent, compared to a wheat-based product at 2.2 percent, it's not hard to see the added value of barley.

Q: When can producers expect to see the benefits?

A: When it comes to food barley development, we're still in the test-marketing phase on all fronts, so the benefits to the producer right now are not high. But in the future I think you're going to see food barley being one of the main staples for production on the Prairies.

Talking to some of the industry people in the know, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have food barley reach the acreage equivalent of durum at its peak in Western Canada.

Right now, Millhouse can't compete with a top wheat variety such as Snowbird for production performance. For example, Snowbird will get you 75 bushels of grain per acre on a typical farm, while Millhouse would get you 50 bushels. But if we can get growers a premium price for a variety like Millhouse, and get the yield up to a more competitive level, we believe this will quickly become a strong option for producers.

Related story:

Western Grains Research Magazine explored the health benefits and innovative quality potential of wheat and barley starches in this article from the December edition: "Cashing in on carbs."