MARK R. SCHMITT (1), Allen D. Budde (1)
(1) USDA Agricultural Research Service, Cereal Crops Research Unit, Madison, WI
Micromalting procedures for malt quality analysis typically use
50–500 g of barley, and can produce representative malts for evaluation
of malting quality potential in barley breeding programs. Modifications
to routine micromalting protocols in which small quantities of grain
within inexpensive mesh containers are surrounded by a larger quantity
of grain in standard-sized containers allow malts to be generated from 2
g of barley. Common malting quality parameters measured on these
small-scale malts correlate well with those from standard malting and
malt quality analysis, demonstrating their suitability for initial
screening of malting quality. The smaller sample size enables
multiplexing samples within a malting container, such that several
different samples can be malted in the space formerly needed for a
single sample, thereby increasing the potential malting throughput. The
combination of this extremely small-scale malting procedure with
previously described reduced-quantity mashing and malt analysis
procedures can expand the capacity for preliminary screening of malt
quality characteristics. This potentially benefits malting barley
germplasm development programs by increasing sample throughput and
reducing analysis turn-around time. In addition, the ability to generate
and analyze representative malts on this very small scale may be useful
in research studies where grain samples are limited, such as might
occur in specially developed genetic populations. This ability to malt
extremely small amounts of barley will also facilitate basic research
studies examining the genetic and biochemical bases of malting quality.
Mark Schmitt received his Ph.D. degree in plant physiology from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1983. He joined the Agricultural
Research Service’s Cereal Crops Research Unit in Madison in 2003 as a
research chemist/lead scientist for a program that includes both basic
and applied research on malting quality.
VIEW PRESENTATION
