Moving to net zero barley production

The Climate Emergency demands that innovative and effective mitigations are urgently developed to achieve a just transition to Net Zero. There is an increasing focus on how this can be tackled in the agricultural sector, while still maintaining production for a growing global population. This project, co-developed by academic and industry partners, will explore the potential for reducing the environmental impact of barley cultivation for the whisky industry.
Whisky is the single most valuable Food and Drink product in the UK (£5.5Bn in 2020), but the barley cultivation stage contributes approximately 50% of the carbon footprint associated with each bottle produced. In large part, this is a consequence of chemical fertiliser use (both energy costs of manufacture and GHG fluxes from soil following application). Therefore, strategies to reduce use of chemical fertilisers, while maintaining sustainable grain production are urgently needed.
The use of distillery wastes for energy production (biogas) through anaerobic digestion (AD) is already an established means of off-setting carbon costs of whisky manufacture. However, AD itself generates wastes with high-nutrient content (digestates) that have potentially deleterious environmental impacts (e.g. effluent discharges affecting water quality). Therefore, the specific aim of this project is to examine the potential value of AD wastes for use as fertiliser replacements, exploiting their high-nutrient value in barley cultivation and supporting circular economy principles through diversion from waste streams. The research will involve controlled environment and field trials to assess the fertiliser equivalence of AD wastes, quantifying growth and grain quality of malting barley, relative to chemical fertilisers. It is essential that impacts of AD wastes on soil health are neutral or positive, and the project will quantify effects of their application on soil biological diversity and functions. This will include isotopic approaches to quantify carbon and nutrient cycling processes in soils (including GHG fluxes and nutrient leaching), combined with molecular characterisation of microbial /faunal communities to determine associated impacts of AD waste application. Based on results obtained, formulations (e.g., AD effluent in combination with biochar generated from solid waste fractions) will be explored to optimise barley production and to foster long-term sustainability of soil ecosystem services in malting barley production systems.