Scottish researchers are working to rank spring malting barley varieties for their resistance to grain skinning, a problem which is giving maltsters a headache.

When the outer layer of the barley grain, or husk, is lost this can cause big variations in water uptake for maltsters and hence big problems in processing.

A wet harvest in 2012 with low levels of sunshine caused grain skinning problems with top malting varieties Propino and Concerto affected across the UK.

See also: 2015-16 Recommended List varieties

This coincided with Steve Hoad, head of the crop science team at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) kicking off work to look at possible varietal resistance and environmental influences.

“Most of the modern spring malting barley varieties have some degree of risk to grain skinning,” he tells Farmers Weekly.

His work is looking to rank varieties for resistance and first results show Belgravia appears to have better resistance than other popular varieties such as Concerto, Odyssey, Moonshire and Propino.

He is waiting for another set of results from harvest this year before drawing conclusions on varietal resistance and the influences of environment factors.

Wet and dry conditions at harvest may exacerbated the skinning problem, Dr Hoad adds.

His work is looking to rank varieties for resistance and first results show that Belgravia appears to show better resistance than other popular varieties such as Concerto, Odyssey, Moonshire and Propino.

He is waiting for another set of results from harvest this year before drawing conclusions on varietal resistance and the influences of environment factors.

Wet and dry conditions at harvest time may exacerbate the grain skinning problem, Dr Hoad adds.

Concerto accounts for about two-thirds of the annual 900,000t demand from Scottish maltsters for distilling and brewing.