Barley is the most common source for malt to be used in brewing beer and other alcoholic beverages. This involves converting the starch of barley into fermentable sugars a process that involves malting, that is germinating of the grains, and mashing, which is an enzymatic process. Numerous metabolic processes are involved in germination, where distinct and time-dependent alterations at the metabolite levels happen. In this study, 2,628 plots of 565 spring malting barley lines from Nordic Seed A/S were investigated. Phenotypic records were available for six malting quality (MQ) traits: filtering speed (FS), wort clearness (WCL), extract yield (EY), wort color (WCO), beta glucan (BG), and wort viscosity (WV). Each line had a set of dense genomic markers. In addition, 24,018 metabolomic features (MFs) were obtained for each sample from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra for wort samples produced from each experimental plot. The genetic variation in the MFs was investigated using a univariate model, and the relationship between MFs and the MQ traits was studied using a bivariate model. Results showed that a total of 8,604 MFs had heritability estimates significantly larger than 0 and for all MQ traits, there were genetic correlations with up to 86.77% and phenotypic correlations with up to 90.07% of the significant heritable MFs. In conclusion, around one third of all MFs were significantly heritable, among which a considerable proportion had significant additive genetic and/or phenotypic correlations with the MQ traits (WCO, WV, and BG) in spring barley. The results from this study indicate that many of the MFs are heritable and MFs have great potential to be used in breeding barley for high MQ.

大麦是用于酿​​造啤酒和其他酒精饮料的最常见麦芽来源。这涉及将大麦的淀粉转化为可发酵的糖，该过程涉及麦芽（即谷物的发芽）和糖化（一种酶促过程）。萌发涉及许多代谢过程，其中代谢物水平发生明显且随时间变化的变化。在这项研究中，调查了来自北欧种子A / S的565个春季制麦大麦系的2628个样地。有六个麦芽品质（MQ）性状的表型记录：过滤速度（FS），麦芽汁澄清度（WCL），提取物产量（EY），麦芽汁颜色（WCO），β-葡聚糖（BG）和麦芽汁粘度（WV）。每条线都有一组密集的基因组标记。另外24 从每个实验区产生的麦芽汁样品的核磁共振（NMR）光谱中，每个样品获得018个代谢组学特征（MF）。使用单变量模型研究MF中的遗传变异，并使用双变量模型研究MF与MQ性状之间的关系。结果显示，共有8604个MF的遗传力估计值显着大于0，并且对于所有MQ性状，显着可遗传MF的遗传相关性高达86.77％，表型相关性高达90.07％。总之，所有大麦中约有三分之一是可遗传的，其中很大一部分与大麦的MQ性状（WCO，WV和BG）具有显着的加性遗传和/或表型相关性。