Five university students across Canada were recipients of the 2025 SaskBarley Scholarship Program, in partnership with Labatt Brewing Company (Labatt).
2025 was the first year of the partnership with Labatt, which Executive Director of SaskBarley Jill McDonald said it came to fruition when the brewing company approached them.
"Labatt actually approached SaskBarley recognizing our graduate scholarship program and wanted to contribute to young researchers developing ideas in the barley industry," she said. "Labatt is well aware that good beer comes from good barley, and our Saskatchewan growers are some of the best, so we wanted to really highlight that connection and to grow the industry for the future."
She adds Labatt contributed an additional $10 thousand to the scholarships.
The winners of the scholarships supported by Labatt are Susane Trevisan from the University of Manitoba, who received a $6 thousand scholarship, and Lauren McNeil from the University of British Columbia, who got a $4 thousand scholarship.
"So Labatts themselves chose those recipients based on our applications and our evaluation process. And Labatts made a very strong connection to malting barley as they looked to strengthen that industry." notes McDonald.
"Canadian barley, grown by Canadian farmers, is at the heart of Labatt’s beer,” said Jeff Ryan, Vice President, Legal and Corporate Affairs at Labatt Breweries of Canada in a news release. “Labatt applauds the recipients of this scholarship, whose future work will be instrumental in advancing our commitment to quality and innovation.”
The winners of the scholarships supported by SaskBarley are Lingjun Zhu from the University of Alberta, getting the $6 thousand scholarship, Nolan Johnson also from the U of A with a $4 thousand scholarship, and Walker Maess from the University of Saskatchewan with a runner-up scholarship of $2 thousand.
McDonald says the scholarships were handed out for the students' ongoing barley research.
A news release states research topics from the winners covered "livestock feed utilization, nitrogen management, precision agriculture and machine learning, malting and brewing performance, and the environmental sustainability of malting barley production."
"So the world of barley research is fairly small across Canada," she explained. "So when we launched the scholarship program, we wanted to make sure we actually got the best researchers across Canada delivering on research projects that impacted Saskatchewan producers. So those recipients, their research projects, we think long term have a direct impact for Saskatchewan producers. So we weren't necessarily picking specifically from Saskatchewan as a province, but the projects themselves, we want to see them impact our local producers. And part of it is just we don't have enough researchers sometimes within Saskatchewan to meet the needs. So we have to go across the country."
McDonald felt the 2025 program had a strong field of applications and it continues to grow each year.
There is a dedicated spot on the SaskBarley website, called Barley Bin, where results of research projects related to barley are posted.
For the 2026 program, she said applications will be accepted again in the summer with the deadline around mid-October.
"So if there's any prospective researchers out there working on barley projects or interested in strengthening the future of the barley industry, then keep an eye on our website at saskbarley.com, because we'll do our scholarship announcement through that website, but that's kind of a rough guideline for the application window."
