Grain Yield and Malting Indices of Brewing Barley As Affected By Time of Planting and Nitrogen Management in the Northeastern USA.

In recent years there has been a steadily increasing demand for craft beer in the Northeast country. Brewers in Northeastern region are seeking more local barley and other grains in the craft beer market. Increased understanding of the viable methods for producing malt quality barley in the region would therefore provides economic benefit to local breweries, malsters, and farmers. A two-year trial was conducted at the University of Massachusetts Research Farm to examine the impact of date of planting and nitrogen application timing in fall and spring on winter survival, grain yield and malt quality indices. In both years the winter barley cultivar ‘Wint-Malt’ was planted on the 5^th, 15^th, and 25^th of September (2014 and 2015). In each planting date, the presence or absence of fall nitrogen applications (0 or 50 kg ha^-1) was combined with spring nitrogen applications (28, 50, or 73 kg ha^-1) for a total of 6 nitrogen regimes. A zero nitrogen treatment was added to 2015-2016 experiment. Barley planted earlier out yielded those that were planted later. However the earlier planting dates suffered from higher foliar diseases, primarily powdery mildew. Deoxynivalenol (DON, aka ‘vomitoxin’) was lower in earlier planting dates than later. While lower protein percentage was measured in the later planting dates, protein levels of barley grain in all planting dates were lower than 12% which is considered an acceptable range for brewing. Fall nitrogen applications had no significant impact on any of the quantified metrics.  Larger applications of nitrogen in the spring resulted in increased yields but higher foliar disease was associated with the highest rate of nitrogen application. Although protein levels increased with increased nitrogen application rate, all harvested grains were in the acceptable range for malting purpose. In the second year of the trial later planting dates had numerically increased winter survival and yield, and spring nitrogen applications improved test weight.