'Heritage' Grains

● RAW MATERIALS Resurrection of ‘heritage’ grains Part 1: British barley varieties Traditional harvesting of Chevalier at Gressenhall Farm, Norfolk “Let husky wheat the haughs adorn’, cultural biodiversity (‘agrobiodiversity’) is a key factor in the battle to achieve And aits set up their awnie horn, food security for a growing population And peas and beans at e’en or morn in a world of climate change. Over the past century, plant breed- Perfume the plain. ing has led to the development of Leeze me on thee, John Barleycorn, cultivars that have often been based on a single genotype with increased yield Thou king of grain!?” potential and disease resistance. This Robert Burns has been referred to by some as ‘agricultural industrialisation’ and results By Ian Hornsey in the production of ‘agro-ecosystems’, which result in the loss of the old Like it or not, the potentially devastating impact of climate landraces that had been produced by continual selection by farmers. If we change, plus the fact that the global population is expected exclude Antarctica, agro-ecosystems to reach nine billion by 2050, means that agriculture faces now cover around 38% of our planet’s land mass. massive challenges. Of prime importance is the need to increase the productive capacity and stability of our major Why are ‘heritage’ crop species important? crops, i.e. maintain ‘food security’. During intensive barley-breeding programmes, some attributes, in- f the 150-odd plant species regu- rice, and maize. In addition, barley is cluding some of those of importance Olarly used for human sustenance, vital for malting and livestock feed. to the brewer, have undoubtedly been just 12 provide around 75% of the Maintaining plant biodiversity is seen lost; indeed, some modern barley world’s plant-based food, with 50% as being at the centre of the global strains have been bred to not have of man’s food-derived energy coming food security challenge. Indeed, the any flavour at all! It is estimated that from the three ‘mega crops’: wheat, conservation and management of agri- in many of our modern crop species 24 z Brewer and Distiller International April 2017 www.ibd.org.uk RAW MATERIALS l have been at the forefront of these activities. At present, some 35Ha of bere is grown on Orkney (much less in Shet- land), most of which goes for malting at Baird’s Inverness plant and Crisp’s Portgordon malting. Some grain is taken for milling by Barony Mill to produce its traditional ‘beremeal’ (ca. 10 tonnes annually), but bere malt goes mostly to Bruichladdich distillery for whisky production and a few craft brewers (including Valhalla and Swan- nay) on the islands. Harvesting bere at Burray, Orkney, 1908 Valhalla on the island of Unst, only about 20% of the original diver- The Royal Botanic Gardens at in the north of Shetlands, and the sity of their wild ancestors has been Kew is leading a global plant con- most northerly UK brewery, launched retained. servation programme to collect wild its bottled ‘Island Bere’ (4.2% ABV) The main downside of the Green relatives of our major food crops for in 2006 and it is still one of its core Revolution, a term coined in the use in plant breeding programmes. products. ‘Island Bere’ is thought to be 1960s, is that the crop uniformity in- Here, we will consider two heritage the first commercial beer to have been troduced into farmers’ fields renders barleys. brewed with 100% bere. plants genetically vulnerable to biotic Regarding the crop, Peter said: and abiotic stresses. Landraces, also Bere “It is spring barley which is well- known as ‘local varieties’ or ‘farmer This ancient 6-row barley has been suited to the north of Scotland’s varieties’, are heterogeneous crop in continuous cultivation in Orkney, short growing season because of its varieties that are reproduced by Shetland and parts of the Western vigorous early growth and ability to farmers and represent populations Isles for about one thousand years produce a crop of grain in a short pe- that are subjected to both natural and may have been introduced during riod. It can be harvested 2-3 weeks and artificial selection. From genetic the Norse settlement or even earlier. earlier than most modern spring studies, it is now evident that crop Dr Peter Martin, of the Agronomy barley varieties on the UK recom- landraces are highly complex and Institute, University of the Highlands mended list. Also, it does not require highly varied in their make-up, and and Islands in Kirkwall, has written a lot of inputs but the downside are in fact, evolving entities. eruditely about the crop in a recent is that grain yield is much lower Twenty-five years ago the moderni- B&DI, and I won’t attempt to compete (2.6-3.8 tonnes/Ha) than for modern sation of agriculture led one commen- with that. Commercial markets for varieties of malting barley. tator to declare that: “The heteroge- beremeal and malt have helped to Bere always lodges and in some neous varieties of the past have been conserve the crop in Orkney and the years this makes harvesting a chal- and still are the plant breeder’s raw Agronomy Institute, together with lenge! Nitrogen content is higher than material. They have been a fruitful, Birsay Heritage Trust (which runs for modern malting barley – around sometimes the sole, source of genes Barony Mill) and a small group of lo- 1.80-1.90% dm and PSY is lower (ca. for pest and disease resistance, ad- cal farmers, including Sydney Gauld, 370 LA/tonne)”. aptation to difficult environments, and other agricultural traits like the dwarf- type in grains that have contributed to the green revolution in many parts of the world.” Re-introducing heterogeneity into our crops is one way of amelio- rating the effects of climate change – and re-visiting the biology of ‘heritage’ crops is an obvious start. Also important are wild ancestors (Horde- um spontaneum C.Koch in the case of barley) and plants known as ‘crop wild relatives’ (CWR), which are basically ‘wild cousins of cultivated crop species’. The latter have been used for many decades for plant breeding and can contribute a wide range of useful traits. Conservation of CWR is now an urgent priority, as is the preparation of a portfolio of CWRs in a form that plant breeders can readily use. Bere growing on Orkney, 4th October, 2015 www.ibd.org.uk Brewer and Distiller International April 2017 z 25 l RAW MATERIALS 1880. This tax on malt was replaced by a tax on beer itself, which meant that British brewers sought to brew more economically, resulting in increasing volumes of cheap malt being imported from abroad. Rice and maize, and other malt substitutes were also increasingly used. Remarkably, though in decline, Chevalier was still winning prizes at what was to be the last Brewers’ Exhibition in 1914. After World War I, it was to be replaced by the hybrids, ‘Plumage-Archer’ and ‘Spratt-Arch- er’, which would dominate the British crop during the inter-war years. There are several versions of how Valhalla Brewery’s ‘Island Bere’ Chevalier came into existence, one of which appears in the 2012 The Oxford Companion to Beer. Chris Ridout ‘harvesting’ The ‘Chevalier’ story Chevalier# is a 2-row, narrow- and plumpness of kernel, and great Up until the early 1800s, malting eared variety originally classified weight. All the best qualities of every barley consisted of ‘landraces’, which as Hordeum distichum, but several class of barley seem combined in were mixtures of types grown from seedsmen developed their own sub- this one variety, excepting that is not saved seed and known by exotic names varieties, so that the description awnless.” such as ‘Long Ear Nottingham’ and came to cover a wide range of nar- Stopes continues with: “Formerly ‘Old Wiltshire Archer’. By the end of row-eared forms of barley. Malting the most approved by maltsters was that century, due to gradual selection protocol towards the end of the 19th called the Rath or Early Ripe, in con- and re-selection, a number of malt- century was summarised by Stopes, sequence of its ripening two or three ing lines had been developed, some who tells us: “Chevalier barley is weeks before the common sorts. As major ones in Britain being ‘Chevalier’, probably the most widely distributed it did not equal the Chevalier, it has ‘Archer’, ‘Spratt’ and ‘Goldthorpe’ and best known variety. It originated to a large extent been replaced by the which are now regarded as ‘heritage’ from the careful cultivation and latter, and is now little grown. It was or ‘heirloom’ varieties. selection of the Rev. J. Chevallier comparatively a plump, thin-skinned The first of the ‘heritage’ barleys of Stonham, Suffolk. It now grows barley, but as on these points bet- to be investigated for potential use most successfully in every coun- ter sorts are now cultivated, it has in barley breeding was Chevalier, a try of Northern Europe, America, passed from the general knowledge 2-row, spring-planted variety which Australia, New Zealand, and even of maltsters.” dominated the English barley crop for Chile. It produces heavy crops of ex- It seems as though ‘Chevalier’ was nearly 100 years and only really started tremely friable grain, distinguished used to distinguish the barley from the to fall out of favour when William by their almost transparent husk, Chevallier family. Dr Beaven uses this Gladstone repealed the Malt Tax in high percentage of starch, evenness terminology – and that’s good enough for me. Strong resistance to Fusarium The resurrection of Chevalier as commercial variety commenced in 2001 when plant geneticist Dr Chris Ridout of the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Nor- wich received a £600 public engage- ment grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to run an event, un- der the title of ‘Breeding Better Beer’.

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