TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1968. Wheat, Flour And Bread Quality

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31864, 17 December 1968, Page 20

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1968. Wheat, Flour And Bread Quality

The concern of the baking trade over any move towards the growing of high-yielding but low-quality strains of wheat is understandable. Bakers of bread, who use nearly two-thirds of the flour produced in New Zealand, prefer flour produced from the (usually) low-yielding, high-testing Hilgendorf wheat. But only 20 or 30 per cent of the country’s wheat is Hilgendorf: most growers prefer the high-yielding varieties such as Aotea, and in a good growing season the mills can produce an acceptable baking flour with little or no Hilgendorf wheat If new strains of wheat, yielding even more bushels to the acre than Aotea but producing an inferior flour, were released to growers, bakers would find it difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the standard of their bread. Such considerations moved Mr W. McCutcheon, a bakers’ representative on the Wheat Research Committee, to protest at the committee’s recent meeting against a change in policy of the Crop Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. The director of the division (Dr H. C. Smith) said the division’s new policy provides for the separation of breeding material into lines of high yield and good quality—the potential baking wheats—and lines of high-yielding wheat of indifferent quality—potential stock-feed wheats. New Zealand’s modest requirements of low-grade wheat for stock feeds are filled by the flourmills from the poorer lines of wheat offered to them for milling. If some portion of the 300,000 acres sown to wheat is to be reserved for stock-feed wheat the millers will have a smaller quantity of hightesting strains from which to choose their milling wheat. Leaving aside the normal year-to-year fluctuations in growing conditions, such a policy must surely reduce the baking quality of flour and increase the supply of wheat suitable only for stock feed, probably producing an exportable surplus of low-grade wheat. In the present state of world markets for grain, any New Zealand surplus of low-grade wheat could be disposed of overseas only at prices well below the cost of production.

It seems, therefore, that the present policy of growing only wheat of nullable—or at least potentially millable—quality is better suited to New Zealand’s needs. This suggests that research and breeding programmes should be confined to strains of wheat the baking qualities of which are equal to or superior to those of Aotea; and such a programme must appeal to the layman or the man of commerce. But is this too short-sighted a view to take of a research programme? Might not future developments in the growing or milling of wheat, or the baking of flour, make possible the production of improved bread from inferior strains of wheat? That the terms of trade may swing heavily in favour of wheatgrowing? Such drastic changes in technology, production, and trade may seem unlikely now; but a modest investment in research at this stage would be a cheap insurance against them. In the meantime, millers, bakers and the public need not be alarmed by this change in research policy—provided they are assured that there is no intention of reducing the standard of flour produced in New Zealand. The chairman of the Wheat Research Committee (Professor J. Packer) has given bakers such an assurance. He said they had to look at the safeguards that might be taken to ensure the production of sufficient high-quality wheat: the c A nmittee might refuse to release a high-yielding wheat of low quality: and if such wheats were released then some form of price control to see that sufficient high-quality wheat was produced might be implemented. Finally, so much time must elaose between the start of a research programme and the commercial release of a new wheat variety that the threat to flour standards is quite remote. It should not be allowed to obstruct research of potentially fundamental significance.