Winter barley has considerable potential for forage production. In addition to the traditional practice of harvesting for seed, winter barley can be harvested at the milky-dough stage as whole plant silage. It can give high yields of high quality green mass that exceeds the yields, energy content and nutritional quality of forage obtained from winter wheat, fall rye, oats or other crops. The whole plant harvest of winter barley can be used as silage or haylage. In view of the above agricultural uses of the crop, our research centre has expanded the research effort on winter barley to produce varieties best suited for forage production.

After several years of selection of superior lines from an experimental mutagenesis program, strains were produced that exceeded the forage yields of conventional cultivars by 100%. Two new cultivars of winter forage barley were registered, and named Shyrokolistay and Kormovay. These cultivars have consistently yielded 400 ct./ha of green matter in farmer’s fields and have the potential of yielding up to 700 ct./ha.

The new cultivars have high levels of components of metabolizable energy. For example the soluble carbohydrate content is 10-12% and in dry and hot weather it can go as high as 20% (when calculated on a dry weight basis). In the spring-early summer season the levels of nutrients in forage barley are somewhat higher than in other forage crops. These elements have high digestibility and are expressed either in silage or haylage.

The production of new cultivars and additional mutants with high dry matter yields creates a potential for a new initiative in this crop; i.e. breeding for high yields of green matter.