Location: Cereal Crops Research
Project Number: 5090-30600-001-001-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 23, 2025
End Date: Sep 22, 2027
Objective:
ARS and Cooperating scientists will collaborate toward the enhancement of cereal grains characteristics in support of the North American grain growers and malting, brewing, distilling industries.
Approach:
USDA scientists and collaborators will use both established and developmental approaches to improve cereal grains for the end use malting, brewing, and distilling industries. The grains as subject matter in this agreement will include varieties of barley, rice and other cereals. Approaches include assessing malt quality through micromalting and ASBC methods, genetic analysis of grain cultivars exhibiting improved quality metrics, development and assessment of malting methods with reduced inputs and increased efficiencies including reduced water usage, using microbiological approaches to characterize microbiome on seeds and in malt, using metabolomic approaches to characterize stable metabolites that contribute to flavor and shelf stability of malted products.