Barley Grass Powder

Barley grass powder is the young aerial leaf of Hordeum vulgare L. (Poaceae) — the same species grown for malting and feed grain, but harvested at a purely vegetative stage, before jointing, while the shoot is still all leaf and no stem elongation or ear emergence has taken place. The cut grass is washed, dewatered, dried at controlled low temperature to protect the pigment fraction, then milled and sieved to a free-flowing powder. Because the whole leaf is retained rather than pressed and the juice dried, the powder keeps the plant's insoluble fibre alongside its pigments and flavones; published analyses of dried barley grass report roughly 29.5% dietary fibre and 27.3% protein on average. The compositional markers buyers ask about are well characterised in the literature. Peer-reviewed figures for dried barley grass give chlorophyll in the region of 438–662 mg/100 g, the C-glycosyl flavones saponarin at 300–1260 mg/100 g and lutonarin at 200–540 mg/100 g, total polyphenol near 1.06%, GABA at 125–183 mg/100 g and potassium above 3,000 mg/100 g. Those values move substantially with cultivar, cutting stage, season and drying route, which is why this material is supplied on a reported-per-batch basis rather than against a fixed assay. Chlorophyll- or saponarin-standardised lots can be agreed at order, as can steam-treated low-microbial cuts for capsule and stick-pack lines. Handling and declaration matter more here than on most greens. Barley grass powder is a whole-leaf material, not an extract: it disperses in water and settles, it does not dissolve, and formulators size the inclusion around that behaviour and around its strong grassy note. The material is vegan and carries no milk, egg, soy, fish, crustacean or nut input. However, Hordeum vulgare is a cereal containing gluten under Annex II of EU Regulation 1169/2011, so it must be named and emphasised on an EU-market label. The gluten proteins sit in the grain rather than the leaf, so a correctly timed harvest tests low, and where a buyer needs a gluten-free position Thovek supplies R5 ELISA results against the 20 mg/kg threshold of Regulation (EU) 828/2014, batch by batch.