Cornell Testing New York-Friendly Barley Plant, Because Beer

Mark Sorrells, Ph.D., has been teaching plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University for the past 36 years. Today, though, he's talking about beer — and he couldn't sound happier

Thanks to an explosion in craft breweries over the past 5-10 years, specifically an increase in New York City microbreweries and a newly adopted brewery law, the malting barley plant integral to beer production is in high demand. The main problem is that the northeast agricultural region of the U.S. isn't very hospitable to the plant

Last year, Sorrells began a three-year project to determine what type of barley plant — if any — could thrive there Read more...