A Public Private Partnership in Plant Breeding – The Case of Irish Malting Barley

This article serves as a data repository for recorded crosses made for spring and winter malting barley breeding in Ireland as a collaboration over 100 years between the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (and its precursor organisation) and Guinness. It describes the genotypes and phenotypes of the surviving 37 winter barley breeding lines that are held in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine gene bank and provides a genotypic description of the spring barley breeding lines. This is the first compilation of all surviving records for the crosses made in both spring and winter barley breeding programmes. Breeding for a certain climate and soil conditions will produce excellent varieties, including, in some cases, varieties with a wide European spread such as ‘Spratt-Archer’. The Irish malting barley breeding programme was very advanced for its time, incorporating the latest breeding techniques (pedigree breeding, mutation breeding, connectivity to European brewery convention trial network) and advanced quality testing in experimental micro-breweries. The breeding programme has pioneered participatory plant breeding involving the growers early in the selection process.