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Introduction
Barley is one of the earliest cultivated cereals and besides the use as human and animal feed it was utilised as a source of fermentable extract for the production of beer and spirits. There are over 300.000 barley varieties that are generally categorized as two-row and six-row.1 Today’s barley selection has been significantly advanced and there are distinct varieties strictly intended for brewing and distilling, in general intended for malting. The selection of barley varieties for malting depends on several factors: availability, cost and final use of the produced malt (feed, brewing, distilling, etc.). However, Croatian commercial barley varieties can be dually declared as brewing/feed (B/F) varieties. Even though this kind of labelling is avoided in the European Union (EU), the reason it still applies in Croatia is that there were no strictly intended varieties (brewing or feed) upon the entry of Croatia in the EU. This would restrict the domestic barley production to introduce the different varieties to brewing or distilling industries even though they have shown good malting characteristics.2 Based on the quality requests set up by brewing and distilling industries, that are in many ways opposite to the requests of the food and feed industries, the Institute of Agriculture Osijek has developed new varieties of spring barley intended for brewing and whisky malt (WM) production.3 The brewing industry inclines to two-row spring varieties, leaving winter varieties with no current approval for use in distilling.4,5 Whisky malt quality depends on the appropriate barley variety and thus it is obvious that distinct varieties have profiled from the total assortment as the ones with the most satisfactory WM qualities. These varieties are referred to as standards and serve both for observing the impact of various agro-environmental and environmental conditions on the crop (climate specifics of the season, different cultivation methods, location changes, etc.) as well as for orientation when introducing new varieties in the assortment. It is well known that the European brewing industry uses only several barley varieties as standards (Vanessa, Tiffany, Casanova, etc.) because of the fact that they are grown in varietal experiments across the continent, so there are a handful of available data for selectors. Although in a smaller count, there are standard varieties for...