Bere is an ancient barley landrace that was widely grown in northern Britain until 100 years ago. Its ability to grow on poor soils, under challenging climatic conditions made it a valuable staple and there has been renewed interest it in recent years as a valuable heritage crop as well as a source of genetic diversity for breeding programmes aimed at sustainable production in a changing environment.
Tim George, Deputy Director of the International Barley Hub
This is a citizen science-based project funded by Scottish Government and EU H2020 project Radiant. Its purpose it is to gather information which allows us to understand which Bere barley varieties are best suited to the range of environments in Scotland, with the intention of selecting the optimum Bere varieties for different production systems and locations.
We have a widening network of people who are interested in growing Bere barley and sharing their experiences. The group covers a diverse range of locations all over the Scottish mainland and islands with others further afield in Cornwall in England and Tipperary in Ireland. Trial sites included everything from hobby farms, community and urban gardens to crofts and organic farms with plots sizes ranging from 1x2m to 1.5 ha. The project is now in its second year and we recently held a workshop where local growers met in person in Dundee and were joined online by others to discuss the trials network.
The group in Dundee had a tour of the Hutton facilities with specific demonstrations of the seed archive and the IBH Field Centre. We focussed on demonstrating the pipeline of post-harvest processing of grain and the pre-sowing set-up for trials. We also demonstrated the plot scale machinery (plot combine and seed drills) at our disposal. Following lunch, Lawrie Brown (project co-ordinator) provided a summary report on the findings of this year’s trials. It showed that the trial network of 15 growers had expanded geographically (Cornwall and Ireland) and that there was a wide range of soil and environments in the network. The data demonstrated that one particular variety, Bere 1 (Origins in North Ronaldsay, Orkney), was consistently ranked number one in many of the metrics measured. However, there was a lack of yield data from all sites, making it difficult to assess which variety was ultimately the most effective in the different conditions.
We then went on to discuss the relative success of the trials and any barriers or bottlenecks to their success. Most of the network members present had had some difficulties in harvesting a yield from their trials and there were a number of issues cited, including bird and mice damage, competition with grass weeds and lack of suitable machinery available for harvest. Some members had had a successful yield and were using this for brewing while others were able to take their grain from field to plate in a day, processing grain in the morning and making Bere Bannocks for tea. It was clear in most cases that the trials had started off well, but then towards the end of the season had failed for the reasons stated above. It was concluded that the weather in the 2024 season was particularly poor for the trials, being wet and cold and promoting weeds. The other issue highlighted was that the small size of the trials made them more prone to devasting damage by animals.
We agreed that a potential solution would be to run larger trials so they would not be so impacted by damage by birds etc. However, it was identified that increasing the scale of the trials would lead to problems with availability of machinery for harvesting and processing. At the very small scale everything can be done by hand in the “kitchen”, but once you go to mid-scale then the large scale machinery is not appropriate or available and a range of medium scale machinery doesn’t exist or is not easy to access. The suggestion of the group was that croft/small holder scale machinery cooperatives should be established on a regional scale with significant investment from government or philanthropy to support rural economies by allowing them to grow crops at a scale that can support small local value chains.
We are planning another batch of trials for 2025 and if anyone is interested in joining the group please contact Lawrie Brown (Lawrie.brown@hutton.ac.uk).