Manitoba scientists create new barley variety

Connor McDowell
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Brandon Sun

A barley variety that scientists bred in Brandon has been licensed by a food supplier and is set to arrive on restaurant plates and retail stores in the coming years.

AAC Magenta — a purple-coloured barley — developed at a research centre in Brandon, has been licensed by Progressive Foods, which supplies food to businesses, such as Co-Op.

Progressive Foods CEO Marvin Nakonechny said he plans to introduce the new barley in quick-cook format to restaurants, hotels and convention centres, and later to retail stores in household-sized bags.

“We’ll be positioning it in the health category,” said Nakonechny. “But more interesting, we’ll be positioning it into the food service.”

Nakonechny added he hopes to supply purple barley to businesses that serve food. He said the product is right for the market because it looks good on a plate, and the food service industry emphasizes presentation.

“If you had this made into a risotto, and you have it on your plate, it’ll look like caviar,” said Nakonechny.

The timeline for market rollout is hard to predict, but the CEO expects he will be supplying businesses and grocery stores with the new barley within two years. He already supplies barley in quick-cook format to Co-Op.

A researcher involved in the scientific breeding told the Sun on Friday that the purple colour comes from the barley having antioxidant qualities. The antioxidants could not be introduced to the breed without also adding colour.

Ana Badea, who worked on the project at the Brandon Research and Development Centre, said black and purple are the two colour options that reflect this quality in the barley.

“We felt that purple will provide the strongest antioxidant content compared (with other colours),” said Badea. “Basically, we targeted three different things — beta-glucan, antioxidants and protein.”

The AAC Magenta breed took on a purple colouration, along with its higher protein content and levels of beta-glucan — a fibre that has been tied to health factors, such as lowering cholesterol.

“For us, the next step will be to conduct additional research,” she said. “Either from the university or from even within AAFC, to showcase the benefits.”

While the goal was to introduce health properties to the barley breed, it still must be proven that the breed passes on those benefits to people eating it.

Badea pointed out the barley can be used to make tortillas. It can also be used by nutraceutical companies that simply want to grow the crop, harvest it and extract the nutrients to put into other foods.

“I feel happy because we’ve done our job,” said Badea. “We delivered a new product that didn’t exist before. And I think now it’s up to my colleagues, like food chemists, or people like I said, from the pharmaceutical world or from the cosmetic world, to take it and to use it further.”

The benefits must be proven for AAC Magenta, as with other new breeds, but barley in general has been recognized in Canada for a long time. In 2012, the Government of Canada approved this health claim for product labels: “Barley fibre helps reduce/lower cholesterol.”

Badea said that to the best of her knowledge, a coloured variety of Canadian barley has not been registered before.

Lori-Ann Kaminski, research program manager at Manitoba Crop Alliance, said the purple barley breed could have a future in health products.

“It’s a real possibility,” Kaminski told the Sun. “And if you look at some other crops, like oats or barley used in other parts of the world, that’s more common.”

A few examples from other parts of the world include its usage in flatbreads and extracts for smoothies, such as protein powders and antioxidants.

The market in Manitoba, however, is still in its infancy, said Kaminski. And so the product has a bit of catching on to do.

“Marketing-wise, food companies haven’t really grabbed it and run with it,” she said. “And that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be because it has a lot of great health attributes.”

Nakonechny said the months ahead will see him devise a marketing system to ensure the purple barley sticks out. The goal is an end product that keeps its selling point of being a health food with a strong and attractive purple colouring.

“I need to determine how well I’ll retain the colour. Secondly, I may need to put it to a colour sorter to maximize the (purple), because when we cook it, we may have some grains that have lost their colour.”

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