Not easy for bakers

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34129, 15 April 1976, Page 8

Not easy for bakers

Taking into account the baking quality of w heat harvested this year, bakers were having difficulty in maintaining the quality of their bread, the director of the Wheat Research Institute, Mr R. W. Cawley, said this week.

The institute has nov» tested about 10.000 samples from the current harvest, which is now drawing to a close. The tally of samples includes more than 700 from Southland and it was

estimated on Monday that the Southland harvest was now about three-quarters of the way through. The over-all average baking score is 34.2 compared with 37.6 for the whole of last year’s harvest. For individual varieties the scores are (with those for last year in parenthesis): Hilgendorf, 37.9 (40.1); Aotea, 35.3 (37.7); Arawa, 34.5 (33.2); Kopara. 36.2 (38) and Karamu. 30.8 (37). The average for the more .han 700 Southland samples

tested is 34.1. These are mainly Aotea and the average compares with 38.2 last year, indicating that in Southland also quality is down on last year. For the relatively few samples of Karamu grown in Southland the average is a meagre 24.7. Not a great deal of sprouting has yet shown up in the southern samples. The 10,000 odd samples tested by the institute represent about 370,000 tonnes of wheat.