Testing of new crop

Press, 22 December 1978, Page 6

Testing of new crop

The Wheat Research Institute in Christchurch will be carrying out tests .on samples from the new season’s wheat crop in very much the same way as last season.

The flour made from samples will be baked and samples will also be tested for protein content as was done for the first time last year.

The director of the institute, Mr R. W. Cawley, said this week that while the protein testing would be done primarily for information, as was the case last year, both the Wheat Board and also some mills would be making some use of the information in their wheat handling programmes. Although, the baking test would always be of considerable importance, as the industry became familiar with protein test results it was expected to increasingly use them to supplement the baking test results. Referring to work that they had done in the last two years through Archers mill at Southbrook, where they had been able to sample every load of wheat, coming into the mill and then carry out various analyses and tests on the samples, including the mechanical dough development baking test, Mr Cawley said it had been found that there was a

very strong correlation between the mechanical dough development baking score and protein content. However, this relationship was not the same from one year to the next. This did, however, indicate that wheat could be segregated on a protein basis and that bulk quantities made up of high protein lines or wheat would have a higher baking score than bulks made of low protein lines, although some individual lines might not show this close relationship between baking quality and protein. Mr’Cawley noted that a farming leader recently expressed concern that where farmers did not have a pre-harvest test or check done on lines of wheat they might bulk together bug-infested and damaged wheat with sound wheat and thus render both lines unusable.

A pre-harvest check was readily available from the institute, although last year only about 12 samples were submitted for this purpose. Samples of this nature.

he said, should be clearly labelled so that they received the appropriate priority, both in testing and in telephoning the results.

The results of the testing of all other samples were posted . Mr Cawley said that as always farmers should endeavour to obtain truly representative samples of each line of wheat for testing. Such a sample was much better taken as a running sample while the wheat was being transferred into a bin. It was difficult to draw a representative sample from a targe bin and a sample taken from the surface was hardly likely to be representative.

The institute will be resuming after the holidays on January 8. Additional staff totalling 10 will be employed to help with the testing rush. These comprise students, and Mr Cawley said that the institute had filled its requirement in this respect.