Barley makes up 63 per cent of Scotland’s cereal crop and is used for malting and distilling, as well as animal feed. Its production depends heavily on nitrogen fertilisers made from fossil fuels.

Using more sustainable fertilisers will help make barley ‘greener’, but farmers and the whisky industry want to ensure that their use won’t make the crop less suitable for whisky production.

A team of researchers from Heriot-Watt University and University College Dublin have been testing three types of sustainable fertilisers or biostimulants.

Dr Angela Feechan, a plant pathologist at Heriot-Watt, said: “The Irish BioCrop project is carrying out field trials at the moment, and we’ll be using their grain.

“They are investigating how biostimulants made from algae, bacteria and yeast perform for barley growth, health and yield compared to traditional fossil fuels.

“It’s not enough to know if we can grow barley without fossil fuels. We need to know what changes...