The OPTIMALT project
The OPTIMALT project aims at developing a rapid and reliable on-line tool for assessing the malting quality of barley using automated optical analysis to overcome the limitations of current technologies.
The Consortium
The OPTIMALT consortium is composed of 11 industry partners and 3 research partners together representing 5 European Member States plus Turkey. The project is being coordinated by IRIS, a research performing company from Spain.
Quality of the barley
The quality of the barley is key to finally obtaining a premium end product, thus the malting quality (MQ) of barley needs to be assessed by a reliable technique.
Project
The malting process is the first stage of beer production.
It transforms the barley into malt through a germination process that needs to be well controlled.
Background
The EU malting barley industry supplies almost 50% of global malting barley requirements.
The sustainability of thousands of EU SME farmers depend on the competitiveness of this industry, as is the quality of our brewing and distilling industries.
Solution
This project will provide the Malting Barley chain with a novel MQ assessment tool to replace the expensive, laborious and non-objective standard analyses currently used by the sector.
