Lofty Nijo: A high quality malting barley variety released from an Australian-Japanese collaboration

Abstract

A new malting barley variety, Lofty Nijo, was bred in Australia through a collaborative breeding program between a Japanese brewing company and Adelaide University. The variety is early flowering and maturing, with similar yield potential to Schooner except in lower rainfall areas, and is not zinc efficient. It produces plump grains with low screenings similar to Schooner and more uniform and plumper grains than Franklin. Lofty Nijo has a well-balanced malting quality profile. It shows high values in malt extract, diastatic power, apparent attenuation limit and Hartong index (VZ45) and low values in wort beta-glucan and viscosity. The Kolbach index of this variety is lower than Schooner and Sloop, however, it is higher than Franklin. A pilot-scale brewing trial indicated that Lofty Nijo is as suitable for Japanese brewing as the world's leading varieties, such as Franklin. Lofty Nijo should therefore offer a premium malting barley variety in Australia for export markets. The breeding, agronomic performance and quality profile of the variety is described in this paper.