December 2024 issue

Volume 69, Issue 12

To turn cereal grains into the whiskey in your old fashioned, a delicate dance of art and science is performed. The first step is the creation of barley malt. But some barley used for malting produces glycosidic nitrile, a compound that can be a precursor to a carcinogen called ethyl carbamate. Luckily, glycosidic nitrile production can be bred out—like in the new glycosidic nitrile-null (GN0) barley variety ‘Top Shelf,’ recently released by Oregon State University and registered in the Journal of Plant Registrations. See story on page 8. Photo shows Scott Fisk, a barley breeder at Oregon State University (left), and Jarrad Gollihue from the University of Kentucky's James Beam Institute viewing GN0 barleys at Oregon State's Hyslop Farm. Photo courtesy of Pat Hayes.