Care with sampling urged

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33106, 22 December 1972, Page 9

Care with sampling urged

it almost goes without saying now that the Wheat Research Institute will be testing samples of all wheat harvested in the coming harvest season for baking quality. Millers have again requested this service to help guide them in making purchases. The director of the institute, Mr R. W. Cawley, said this week that arrangements would be as in pre-

vious years, but he added that he wanted to emphasise the importance of proper sampling of wheat to avoid disputes over deliveries and other problems later.

This was also emphasised by the general manager of the Wheat Board, Mr L. C. Dunshea, who said that farmers should take care to ensure that the sample of a line of wheat offered for sale or shipment was a truly representative sample, so that disputes over the delivery of the line might be avoided. These disputes arose when a line was found not to accord with the sample and at that stage there was a risk of the wheat being rejected. In the case of bulk wheat, samples should be drawn, preferably with a probe, either from each header full or truck load, as harvesting progresses, the samples being bulked to form a representative sample of the line. A less satisfactory alternative is to draw samples from bulk bins by using a probe which is long enough to reach the bottom of the bin, and if this method is adopted samples should be drawn at, say, 4ft centres and bulked together. It is very difficult to get a truly

representative sample after the bin is filled. Where the wheat from more than one paddock is being tipped into the same bin, separate representative samples from each paddock should be taken. In all of the above cases a representative sample of 31b should be produced. If wheat is sold for delivery over a period of time subsequent to the

harvest, the buyer has the right to request a fresh sample before accepting delivery of the wheat. There are some "don’ts” about sampling procedures. Samples should not be drawn before the harvest in a paddock is completed—for instance “rubbed out” samples or samples drawn before a break in the weather with the crop not being re-sampled when harvesting starts again. Samples should also not be presented as representative of a number of paddocks when they are drawn from only one paddock and likewise samples should not be drawn before drying is completed in those cases where the wheat has to be dried. Discussing sampling of bagged wheat, Mr Cawley said that 10 sacks should be sampled in a line of 100 sacks or less, and in lines containing more than 100 sacks the number of sacks sampled should be the square root of the number of sacks in the line.

At the request of the Wheat Board, Mr Cawley

said that the institute wrnuld again be examining all samples of Hilgendorf to ensure that they were indeed Hilgendorf and not Kopara. Growers were particularly warned to take care that they did not mix Hilgendorf with Kopara, because the Wheat Board paid for such mixtures at the Kopara price. The institute will resume after the holidays on January 8.