If you’re in the mood for an adult beverage these days, asking a server what’s on tap is a question that brings a much more complicated answer than it did a decade ago. Today, even the most modest restaurant is likely to have a dozen available beers, a detailed wine list and multiple distilled beverage choices. Consumer tastes are changing, and down on the farm that’s an opportunity for producers raising one specialty crop —hops.

Yet hops development has been more limited in recent years. “I was the only public hops breeder in the United States for several years,” says John Henning, a research geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, Corvallis, Ore.

Henning’s work has gone a long way in recent years to identify genes that confer resistance to disease and boost other valued traits for this crop. But he’s getting more help this year and into the future.

In 2017, the Brewers Association, whose members are small and independent craft brewers, executed a trust agreement with USDA ARS that allows the group to fund public hop research work. In May 2018, the organization executed a subaward with Washington State University to locate that new research effort at the WSU Integrated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, Wash.

The association has also been lobbying for federal support for public hop research, which has led to funding for public hops research. The net result is that two new researchers are soon going to work in Prosser to add on to the work Henning has been doing in Corvallis.

Climate, hops and breeding

Prosser is in the heart of hop production of the Yakima Valley. WSU did have a hop breeding program in the Prosser location in the past, so selecting that site for the new public effort was a logical step in expanding geography for the program.

Ryan Hayes, research leader at USDA ARS in Corvallis, explains that the agency is stepping into that location with a new position for breeding, and it “expands our footprint in terms of things ARS can do research-wise. We now have breeding programs in the Willamette and Yakima valleys,” he says.

Hayes heads up the USDA ARS facility in Corvallis, where Henning is based. The site is home to forage, seed and cereal research. “Somewhere in the history of our unit, hops breeding was added in,” Hayes says. “Hops research goes as far back as the 1930s.”

For Henning, the addition of new staff may shift some workload off his shoulders, but it also means added benefit for developing and testing new varieties. “The environment in Washington and Idaho is more of a desert climate,” he says. “They don’t experience the same issues we do in Oregon, where we have higher moisture and problems with downy mildew.”

That wetter climate makes it difficult to test water use efficiency or temperature stress in an experimental hop variety. “If you’re breeding for that climate, that’s difficult to do in Oregon,” he adds.

Chris Swersey, supply chain specialist with the Brewers Association, explains that in the association’s work with USDA to ramp up the public breeding program, four pillars were outlined as goals for the future:

• Increase yield. A hops field, often called a hopyard, has a multiyear life cycle. Maximizing yield with new varieties can have a multiyear payoff.

• Work for growers. If the new variety doesn’t perform at least as well as what was planted, how is that a win? Swersey asks.

• Meet sensory requirements. This crop is unique in its role in beer-making, conferring both flavor and aroma components to the finished product; this is a product of breeding. The Brewers Association uses an innovative program called HopSource to identify the potential of new hop lines.

• Possess a superior disease package. Hops are susceptible to downy and powdery mildew. New varieties are needed that require less fungicide use to help boost profit.

Hayes notes that there have been private breeding programs since the 1980s, and those companies supply the industry with innovations based upon the work of Henning’s predecessors. Yet, public breeding can enhance a range of factors by deploying genetic techniques to find resistance genes and other traits that would be valuable for the market.

Adding new staff at Prosser can help that process. “There are nuanced things associated with adding more people,” he says. “Two heads are better than one. Good ideas can come faster, too.”

The expansion in staff will include two positions at Prosser. One is a full-time researcher supported by the Brewers Association extramural dollars; the second is a full-time permanent scientist supported by public funding. Both positions are in the process of being filled in 2019.

Moving forward

For Henning, having the new staff can help leverage work he’s done on the hop genome. He’s been slowly incorporating molecular biology into his work since he joined the program more than a decade ago. “The tools have only recently been available, and we’ve expanded in that area along with some work I’ve done with a collaborator at Oregon State University, David Hendrix,” he says. “We now have a true genome for hops, which offers information on gene expression levels in various plant tissues.”

That’s going to offer greater potential to find and identify specific traits. He’s publishing a paper on key traits on powdery mildew, and there’s hope of identifying the genetic markers for genes that confer resistance to downy mildew as well as controlling plant growth and abiotic stress. All of these traits are significant profit-robbers in the hopyard.

Breeding hops is more than crossbreeding to get a specific agronomic trait. The key is to get that trait in a variety — but also maintain the known flavor and aroma profile. “Hop is heterozygous, and whenever you cross, it’s 50% changed. In order to get back to what you want, you have to do inbreeding, and hops do not tolerate inbreeding,” Henning points out. “You make the cross and hope out of that cross with 30,000 individuals, one matches the flavor profile, is disease-resistant and can offer higher yield.”

It’s a daunting challenge.

Rising interest in new hop varieties, driven by a craft brewing industry seeking the “next big flavor” for customers’ advancing beer tastes, will continue to offer a challenge to hop breeding. Having a public program, where all work done can be shared with other breeders, and new lines can be developed for more diverse geographies, is the goal.

For Henning, who started out as an alfalfa breeder in his early days, moving to hops was a significant change. “I would have to say this is the most fun industry to be part of,” he says. “Brewers are great to work with, as are the merchants and the farmers. It’s an exciting industry.”

And with this enhanced public breeding program, it’s about to get more exciting.

Crowdsourcing a hop variety

Just how does the industry identify the next big hop variety that beer drinkers might appreciate? In 2018, the Brewers Association created HopSource, which uses sensory science to identify how new varieties may be accepted.

Investing in a hopyard is no mean feat. Hops take time to be established, and a hopyard can last as long as 10 to 15 years; in a fast-changing beer market, selecting the right variety is key.

Swersey explains that HopSource is a new approach that allows crowds of sensory scientists and brewmasters to weigh in on new varieties.

“This is a process to measure descriptive attributes of raw hops, and use a hedonic scale to determine liking and the likely commercial acceptance of a variety,” he says. “You have breeders working on plant material that want the right disease resistance and yield, but you want to know which hops will have commercial acceptance by end users.”

The challenge was identifying those new hops that the market might accept. In late 2018, the Brewers Association staff conducted its first HopSource hop sensory assessment to gauge brewer interest in public varieties. The idea is to bridge the gap between brewers and researchers to identify varieties that will “sell.”

The program involved partnering with the DraughtLab and Yakima Valley Hops. DraughtLab is a company that focuses on measuring sensory experiences; it designed the experiment to be short and clean, allowing busy brewers to get in and out quickly during their busy hop selection days in Yakima. Individual participants contributed eight to 10 minutes per flight of hop samples. During that period, they provided descriptive attributes and hedonic “liking” responses using a tablet-based app.

Over the weeklong event, the program measured sensory quality of nearly 50 experimental hop varieties that the Hop Research Council can use to provide feedback to USDA ARS hop researchers.

“It’s not inexpensive to plant a hop field,” Swersey says. “This is the basis for making intelligent choices for planting hops and making that investment.”

The hops industry is being revitalized by experimenting brewmasters who fire up their kettles across the country to seek new flavors for a growing customer base. Innovations like HopSource can help refine that process. You can learn more at brewersassociation.org.