Yield and protein concentration of spring malting barley: the effects of cropping systems in the Paris Basin (France)

In an intensive farming region, where farmers achieve very good results with winter wheat or sugar beet, there are still many problems in achieving combined control of yield and grain protein concentration in spring malting barley. A regional agronomic diagnosis was performed on the variations of both these outputs, in a network of twenty farmers' fields for three years. Three key variables explained the joint variations in yield and protein concentration: total nitrogen absorbed by the crop, the efficiency of absorbed N relative to the number of grains, and mean grain weight. Analysis of variations for these variables, within the network, enabled us to understand which situations produced satisfactory results and which did not: available nitrogen in the soil, topsoil structure, crop water supply and the level of the root disease take-all, were the main environmental conditions affecting yield and grain protein concentration. Improvements in cropping systems and barley husbandry are proposed in order to increase yield and manage protein concentration.