Grain beta-glucan as selection criteria for wort beta-glucan in malt barley improvement

Abstract

In malt barley improvement, lower values of beta-glucan in the wort is one of the most desirable criteria to get better quality of the end products. To estimate wort -glucan, the barley grains first need to be malted and then mashed to get wort, which is then used to measure beta-glucan in the wort. It takes a large quantity of grains, a lot of time and labour for the malting process and wort preparation, and cumbersome costly analysis to determine wort beta-glucans. During initial generations of malt barley breeding, the grain quantity is major limitation along with large number of samples for screening. In this study, a strong positive correlation has been observed between grain, malt & wort beta-glucan contents, indicating the possibility of selecting low wort beta glucan only by estimating beta-glucans in grain by taking a smaller quantity of samples.