Preharvest sprout damage as measured by pearling

Numerous methods exist to determine whether a sample of barley contains kernels that have pregerminated prior to the harvest of the crop. The sensitivity, equipment requirements, and technical skills vary widely among these methods. In North America, the most widely used test at the elevator or malthouse level involves the pearling of a sample and visual inspection to generate a percent sprouted by weight. However, while widely utilized, the American Society of Brewing Chemists has not evaluated this test. The current study involved collaborative evaluation of the method utilizing naturally sprouted samples from the 2002 North American barley crop. The method yielded acceptable repeatability and reproducibility coefficients of variation for samples with moderate to high levels of sprout damage. At very low levels of damage, the variation was very high. Germination tests and other sprout damage methods were performed for purposes of comparison.