Eric Lefol remembers looking at a new barley cultivar in 1995 and thinking there was something special about it. At the time a young barley breeder at the Crop Development Centre in Saskatoon, Sask., he was assisting fellow breeders Bryan Harvey and Brian Rossnagel in picking out cultivars that looked promising.
“It was a very lovely, very good-looking variety. You could spot it in a trial right away. It was elegant, in a word,” remembers Lefol, now 57 and serving as manager for the Fédération des francophones de Saskatoon.
That variety would be named CDC Copeland and would come to dominate the brewing world along with AAC Metcalfe. Since then, CDC Copeland has been grown on over 10 million acres in Western Canada and has produced enough barley to brew 30 bottles of beer for every person on earth.
Considering everything it has accomplished, CDC Copeland has been selected by members of Germination’s editorial board to receive the Seed of the Year Award for 2019-2020. Varieties are evaluated on their performance, presence in the value chain, sustainability, marketability, innovation, end use potential, overall impact and contribution to the Canadian agri-food industry.
CDC Copeland is marketed in Canada and the United States by SeCan, available though a network of over 500 seed grower members across Canada. In 2019 SeCan members sold more CDC Copeland than any other year in the history of the variety.
Early Days
In the early years of the release of CDC Copeland it was not necessarily the malt quality that drove its market share increases — it was strong agronomics. Farmers began growing CDC Copeland as it provided a true dual purpose — it offered strong grain or silage yield along with the potential for use as malt.
The key was the absence of an agronomic downside for growing the variety. This allowed for a slow steady growth and product availability until the end-use market was fully ready to embrace the variety as a mainstream malt variety.
“I didn’t think it would be so big at first. CDC Copeland came out before the rise of the craft brewing industry,” remembers Bryan Harvey (pictured), whose program at the CDC developed the variety and who served as malt breeder at the time. Now 82, he has since retired, with Brian Rossnagel then adding malt barley to the feed, food and forage breeding aspects of the CDC program. He now too has retired and Aaron Beattie is now the barley breeder at the CDC.
“After creating CDC Harrington, maltsters and brewers wanted a high enzyme profile. I expected Copeland to occupy maybe 25% of the acres, but I was surprised how far it went,” Harvey adds.
In the malting and brewing world, CDC Copeland is now king, rivalled only by AAC Metcalfe. Copeland is prized by both large adjunct brewers as well as smaller craft brewers for its versatility in creating the base for beer of all kinds, from mass-produced pale lagers to all-malt craft beer styles.
At the time of registration, CDC Copeland offered a 12% yield increase over the check Harrington. Also, CDC Copeland was predictably lower in grain protein than AC Metcalfe. The lower grain protein was attractive to many producers since high grain protein was the most common reason that barley was not accepted for malting.
As CDC Copeland had a “different” enzyme package than AC Metcalfe it had a slow but steady ramp up from 2003-2008, growing to 23% of all two-row malts. Between 2009 and 2015 market share slowly climbed each season, and in 2016 — after 14 years in the market — CDC Copeland passed AC Metcalfe to become the most widely gown (and selected) malt variety. The dual function of the variety had an impact — I gained full acceptance in China, as well as fuelling the growing craft beer market. Today CDC Copeland still offers a competitive yield and agronomic package.
Success
“It’s done so well in the field. Only some more recent varieties are agronomically better from a farmer’s point of view,” says Rossnagel, now 67.
“When we applied for registration, several people from the malting and brewing committee said, ‘Yeah, it’s a nice little variety, but we don’t think it will go very far.’ It’s gone a lot further than anyone thought.”
And therein lies the rub, as the saying goes. Rossnagel notes that CDC Copeland has become a victim of its own success. In the world of brewing, old habits die hard, and both maltsters and brewers — to say nothing of farmers — are hesitant to try new varieties of barley. CDC Copeland has become so prized by brewers that farmers are reluctant to stop growing it, and brewers have become so reliant on the variety in the brewing process that even after almost two decades, they don’t want to switch.
“Brewers get used to doing things a certain way — each variety behaves a certain way in the malt plant and the brewhouse. There’s a lot of management and skill that goes into it, so once you have something that works, anyone would be reluctant to make a change,” Harvey says.
“It’s been that way as long as I can remember, and my memory goes back a long way. Copeland has been great, but 20 years is too long for a variety to be relied upon. The breeders turn out a better variety every five years or so, and in my mind that’s the ideal life cycle for a variety.”
According to Harvey, part of the danger in using a variety like CDC Copeland for so many years is the chance of disease organisms mutating and gaining a foothold — disease resistance eventually breaks down.
“You expose yourself to a great deal of biological risk when one or two varieties dominate. It only makes sense to have many varieties out there growing.”
Harvey adds that even though it’s still hanging on, CDC Copeland will eventually fall to a newer, better variety with a superior agronomic package — the question is which variety will eventually inherit the crown.
Credits:
Created with images by Hans - "barley field barley cereals" • Patrick Fore - "Beer in frosted mug"