Danish Preferred


Danish program for industry approval of malting barley varieties

the aim of the program is to create a stringent but at the same time pragmatic program, which is based largely on the chain's own assessment of the potential of a given variety. This is ensured by making demands for self-payment and high requirements for the multiplication of the variety. The program does not aim to politically limit the number of varieties but is open to approve all relevant varieties. The industry will for logistical reasons, make sure that an appropriate number of varieties are put forward to the market.

 

Initiator and Steering Group for Danish Preferred

The Danish Malting Barley Network act as the Steering Group for Danish Preferred. The Network has recently been established as a subgroup under DAKOFO (Danish Grain and Feed Trade Association). DAKOFO will handle the secretariat for both the network and the committee.                

 

The Committee


The Committee represents the entire value chain for malting barley varieties. The members of the Committee are as follows:

 

Representatives from the plant breeding industry:

  • Birger Eriksen (Sejet Plant Breeding)
  • Kim Bonde Pedersen (Nordic Seed)
  • Jens Ole Nielsen (Saaten Union)

Representatives from grain broker companies:

  • Christian Petersen (Skovs Korn)
  • Morten Hoel (Copenhagen Merchants)

Representatives from agribusiness companies:

  • Henrik Stilund (DLA)
  • Mogens Frederiksen (DLG)
  • Claudio Pelsen (Mollerup)

Representatives from the malting industry:

  • Lars Studsgaard Pedersen (Viking Malt)
  • Mogens Lassen (Fuglsang Malt)

Representative from the brewing industry:

  • Jacob Andersen (Carlsberg Research Laboratory)

Chairman of Danish Preferred:

  • Birger Eriksen (Chairman of Variety Denmark)

Secretary:

  • Asbjørn Børsting (DAKOFO)
  • Emil Dalsgaard Hansen (DAKOFO)

Observers:

  • Gerhard Deneken (Tystofte Foundation)

                                                                                                              

Precondition for application to Danish Preferred

Two years results from either Danish Official Testing or Farmer Union Trials and two years of micro malting performed at VLB with samples and application through the Tystofte Foundation.

 

Acreage and amounts of seed for the different steps in the program

At application to the program, at least seed for establishing 65-100 ha multiplication should be available. For final acceptance at Danish Preferred a minimum of 500 ha multiplication is required, for special traits,such as null-lox, DMS or “varieties for organic”, a reduced acreage will be accepted

 

The technical steps in the program

Stress test performed by micro malting from 3 locations under variable conditions (steeping to 45%, 43%, 41%; germination temp. 18/14,5oC; 5 days steeping/germination; isotherm mashing at 65 oC)

 

The applicant is paying the full costs for the stress test (samples will be provided by Tystofte Foundation).  The following parameters will be analysed: Barley: sorting, protein, germination index, gelatinization temperature. Malt: extract, total N, soluble N, Kolbach index, wort colour, viscosity, beta-glucan, friability, final attenuation,  FAN,  alpha-amylase, beta-amylase, limit dextranase, wort turbidity.  Results will be presented both as raw data and as index figures.

 

Large scale malting at the two Danish malting companies (Viking Malt and Fuglsang) and at one malt house from neighbour countries. The foreign malting companies that are participating in the program will each take one variety on turn. Batch size at Fuglsang and Viking Malt is 150 and 350 tons respectively. Batch size at the foreign malt houses is estimated to app. 350 tons. All analyses on malt will be reported and schemes with minimum acceptable values and “traffic lights” (taking the year average into account).

 

Brewing will be conducted at Carlsberg and Fuglsang and possibly at a foreign brew house. Key figures for the brewing process will be reported: wort collection, beer filtration, real degree of fermentation (RDF), yeast performance, process problems or process advantages.

 

Guidelines for publishing data

All data will be public and will be presented on the Danish Preferred website. However, after receiving results from the stress test, the applicant will have a week to withdraw varieties and these data will not be published.

 

Timeline

Deadline for application 15. october each year.

Two annual meetings are held for variety application a February meeting and a summer meeting. 

Stress test evaluation and variety presentation is made only in the February meeting, evaluation on the Industry test can be done at both the February and the summer meeting.