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Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is an ancient cereal grain, which upon domestication has evolved from food grain to a feed and malting grain. It is considered fourth largest cereal crop in the world, with a share of 7% of the global cereal production. Barley grains have higher soluble dietary fibre and lower low density lipoprotein (LDL) content and hence also recommended medicinally.

Barley is also a rich source of tocols, including tocopherols and tocotrienols, which are known to reduce serum LDL cholesterol through their antioxidant action. Barley is grown nearly by 100 countries worldwide and during 2011, the global area under the crop was nearly 48.60 million hectares with a production of 134.27 million tonnes.

In India, area under the crop is concentrated in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, and Bihar etc. in plains and Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir in the hills. During 2011-12, in India, barley occupied nearly 0.65 m ha area producing nearly 1.61 m tons grain, with a per hectare productivity of 24.8 q. This rise in production over last year was due to the availability of new high yielding, stable and disease resistant varieties with adoption of sustainable management and plant protection technologies.

During 51^st All India Coordinated Wheat and Barley Worker’s Meet (AICW & BW) three new feed barley varieties i.e. RD 2786, RD 2794 and VLB 118 were identified for different agro-ecological conditions (Table 1).

Table 1. Identified feed barley varieties and their agro-ecological suitability 

Under coordinated varietal evaluation trials, RD 2786, RD 2794 and VLB 118 exhibited average grain yield of 50.20, 29.90 and 30.84 qtls/ha, respectively.

For grain yield the variety RD 2786 was 15.70 per cent higher over the central zone check variety PL 751, while the variety RD 2794 was at par with check variety RD 2552 and 3.46 per cent higher over the other check variety NDB 1173.

The variety VLB 118 exhibited yield superiority of 8.20 per cent over the northern hills check variety (rainfed) UPB 1008. Some important quantitative (average), morphological and grain characteristics of the varieties viz. RD 2786, RD 2794 and VLB 118 are given below (Table 2)

 Table 2. Quantitative, morphological and grain characteristics of the three barley varieties.

The varieties (RD 2786, RD 2794 and VLB 118) were found promising over the existing varieties after multi-locational and over the years evaluation. The production conditions, agronomic package of practices and plant protection measures of these varieties are given below (Table 3).

Table 3. Major agronomic packages and protection practices for feed barley

Authors:

Vishnu Kumar, AS Kharub and Dinesh Kumar

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Directorate of Wheat Research, Karnal-132001