Congratulations to Professor Matt Tucker, Dr Doug Stewart (Coopers) and Dr Tristan Coram (Australian Grain Technologies) for ARC Linkage scheme grant.
Summary:
Barley is a fundamental ingredient in the brewing and distilling industries, but traditional malting processes that germinate and dry grain are resource-intensive and challenged by rising energy costs. This project aims to identify natural genetic variation in barley that contributes to improved performance during gas-powered kilning, the most costly processing step for the $484M malt export industry. The multidisciplinary project team of seed biologists, maltsters, and breeders, is expected to generate new information regarding the basis for variation in grain drying. This is expected to deliver reduced-input barley varieties for Australian growers that require less energy to process and are highly valued in domestic and export markets.
The Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage Projects scheme promotes national and international research partnerships between researchers and business, industry, community organisations and other publicly funded research agencies. By supporting the development of partnerships, the ARC encourages the transfer of skills, knowledge and ideas as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research. The Linkage Projects scheme supports projects which initiate or develop long term strategic research alliances to apply advanced knowledge to problems, acquire new knowledge and as a basis for securing commercial and other benefits of research. –From arc.gov.au