Grain and malt milling energies in sorghum and their relationships with extract and diastatic power

Twenty three sorghum genotypes were shown to vary widely for a range of grain and malt quality characters. Grain milling energy did not give an indication of the likely malting performance of sorghum samples. There were, however, close relationships between malt milling energy and both % extract and diastatic power, if samples with unusually high or low grain nitrogen contents were excluded from the population under study. Rapid screening of very small malt samples for milling energy and diastatic power could form the basis for malting quality selection in early generations of sorghum breeding programmes.