Barley and GMO Technology?

[charliep]

Lots of discussion around GMO and wheat but little if any mention of barley. A couple of things to think about about when you are crop scouting/spraying.

1) Are the issues around GMO/barley different than for wheat?

2) Note that Australia is working on using GMO technology to deal with issues like drought/salinity tolerance in barley versus straight herbicide tolerance. Corn is adding other traits in its breeding approach over and above traditional herbicide tolerance. Is GMO a way to deal with agronomic issues? If you had a wish list on barley agronomic traits, what issues could GMO breeding address? Drought tolerance? Disease tolerance/resistance?

3) Thoughts on segregation? Zero tolerance is impossible to achieve. A tolerance level (even a low one) is achieveable and works 99.9 % of the time. There are tolerances around feed barley varieties in malt barley. Conventional canola in specialty oil contracts. Other wheat classes in wheat samples.

[charliep]

Have to find a spot for this week's e-malt newsletter quote:

Quote of the week

"Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer."
Frederick the Great

What would happen if the malt barley was GMO? When some brewers use rice/corn as flavoring agents/adjuncts, can consumers/brewers argue beer is GMO free today?

[parsley]

Think I should wade into this one charliep,? I'm up and awake, so I'm tempted.LOL

Let's see....uh, nope.

Never gonna be tempted again. Pars


btw, sorry the info you emailed about got spammed.

[charliep]

Just a project I am working on.

Background.

Recognition there is a need to try different things to improve barley competitiveness/relative profitability with other crops in western Canada - otherwise acres will continue to decrease.

Barley both as a feed component in the livestock sector and relative to feed grains grown in other regions (i.e. corn) doesn't have full access to all breeding technologies (with the caveat that barley has challenges versus corn/canola in terms of bio tech). Australia (our major export competitor on barley) is moving very quickly on using biotech to solve some of their agronomic issues.

Biotech commodities are widely fed livestock (corn, distillers grains, soymeal, canola meal) and there is no differentiation of this product at the meat counter. The consumer doesn't care and would appear not to be prepared to pay for a non GMO product. Europe might be different but I think even the consumer there would be surprised how many GMO crops are included in their food products.

There is recognition that introduction of GMO will impact organic industry, malt barley, barley food industry, etc. If GMO barley moves (the question has not been answered), the question then comes to how to minimize this impact and mitigate risk.

[charliep]

Just to stir some conversation, here is another story. Have to read to get the gist.

http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/vatican_study_endorses_gmos_food_security