Quality Risks Associated with the Utilization of Fusarium Head Blight Infected Malting Barley

摘要

Fusarium head blight (FHB) has adversely affected the quality of barley grown in the northern Great Plains of the United States and the eastern Prairie Provinces of Canada since 1993. Objectives of this study were to document the occurrence of deoxynivalenol (DON) on barley within North Dakota and Minnesota, investigate relationships among FHB, DON, and malt quality, and to determine at what level FHB/DON-con-taminated barley can be safely utilized for the production of quality malt. Since 1993, mean DON levels have ranged from 10.3 to 0.4 μg/g, with a corresponding 81 to 32% of the regional barley crop in excess of 0.5 μg/g. Strong relationships were not observed between either kernel size or kernel weight and DON. As a consequence, cleaning is unlikely to achieve significant reductions in DON levels in most cases. In terms of barley and malt quality, the strongest relationships were observed between barley DON and malt DON and malt DON and wort color. However, malt DON levels could not be reliably predicted from barley at < 1.0 μg/g. Barley with a DON level of < 1.0 μg/g produced acceptable malt.