Beast

In 2014, on the back of success in wheat breeding, we made a commitment to begin a breeding program for Australia’s second largest broadacre crop, barley. The decision to begin barley breeding helps us to build on our mission of improving the strength of Australian rural communities through the development and adoption of improved field crop varieties.

Beast (tested as AGTB0113) is our first ever barley variety and comes only six years since the commencement of our nationally focussed barley breeding program.

Selected from the advanced germplasm pool that we sourced from the University of Adelaide, Beast is a quick maturing variety that has been derived from a cross including Compass and Hindmarsh. Like Compass, Beast boasts a vigorous plant type, which is highly desirable in lower rainfall environments, with improved early vigour over the more erect Hindmarsh types (LaTrobe, Spartacus CL, Rosalind). This also suggests that Beast may be best suited to low-medium rainfall situations where lodging is less of a concern.

Beast has recorded its best yields in medium to low rainfall environments, consistently out-yielding Compass across many environments and has performed very competitively with Rosalind.

Beast has been accepted into the Grains Australia malt accreditation program, with stage 2 malt evaluation being carried out in 2023. Beast is deliverable into the Barley/Feed grade.