Evaluation of Improved Malt Barley Varieties in North Shewa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia

Malting barley is barley that will produce high quality malt. It is a specialty crop for which a premium price is paid by domestic maltters and exporters. Quality requirements for malting barley are reasonably strict and are directly related to processing efficiency and product quality in the malting and brewing industries. Many of the characteristics required are under the control of the producer. Others are determined by weather conditions during the growing and harvesting season. So this trial was conducted on eleven improved malt barley varieties at Fitche Agricultural Research Center for two consecutive years with the objective to identify adaptable, stable, high yielding and its malting potential. The experiment was layout in Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. Nine agronomic traits data and four major malt quality parameters were evaluated. Analysis of variance detected significant difference among varieties for most observed traits both separated and combined analysis. Observation attained significant differences over years and locations for most traits. The combine ANOVA and the AMMI analysis for grain yield across environments revealed significantly affected by environments that hold 40.42% of the total variation. Genotype and genotype by environmental interaction were significant and accounted 38.11 % and 19.10 % respectively. Principal component 1 and 2 accounted 10. 9 % and 4.19 % of the GEI respectively with a total of 15.09 % variation, the interaction effect of variety by year and variety by location imposed significant effect on most traits. Among evaluated varieties; Singiten and EH1847 had significantly higher mean value of grain yield. Malt quality parameters were conducted in the laboratory of Food Technology and Process Engineering at Holleta Agricultural research center. The mean values of malt quality parameter had malt hot water extract, malt Friability, malt protein content and malt beta-glucan, 78.32%, 58.42%, 10.27% and 492.13mg/L respectively. The results obtained showed that most malt quality had differences among the varieties and some of the results found were within the acceptable limit of EBC (European Brewery Convention) standard even if a single variety may not fulfill all the quality requirements. Based on these findings, the Traveler and the HB1963 varieties fulfill some of the quality parameters that are specified in the EBC range.