ChileanJAR

In Chile barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is produced mainly for beer production. In 1976, the Chilean Agricultural Research Institute (INIA) and the Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (CCU), the most important beer producer in the country, signed an agreement to initiate breeding research to produce both high yield and high quality malting cultivars in order to be distributed under contract to barley producers. The new varieties created under this agreement have been distributed to the producers under a system of contract production. From 1978 to 1999, INIA introduced the Aramir variety and created three new varieties, Granifen INIA/CCU, Acuario INIA/CCU and Libra INIA/CCU, which were distributed in the central and southern part of the country, where they demonstrated good adaptability, yield and quality compared to Aramir. The results indicate the internal rate of return reached 51.98% when the price elasticities for demand and supply were - 0.54 and 1.06 respectively. The net social benefit calculated was $5,359 million pesos, where the producer surplus was equivalent to 64,9% of the total net social benefit of the malting breeding research.