Quality remains high

Press, 8 February 1985, Page 22

Quality remains high

The second wheat quality bulletin from the Wheat Research Institute says that much of the wheat being harvested this year is equivalent in quality to good Australian standard white. With about one third, or 100,000 tonnes of the 1985 crop tested, baking quality is the highest seen since the introduction of the mechanical dough development test baking system, said Dr Howard Dengate of the institute. “Commercial flours including a proportion of this year’s harvest already show a distinct increase in quality,” he said. “Work input requirements are also expected to increase by about one watthour per kilogram of dough.”

As indicated in the first quality bulletin, 93 per cent of the crop is going into category A, compared with only 50 per cent of the harvest at this stage in 1984. Only 1.5 per cent of the crop has been rejected for milling grade and most of this is Karamu which is not a bread-baking wheat. Of the major cultivars, no Arawa or Oroua has been rejected, and only 0.4 per cent of Rongotea and 1.5 per cent of Kopara. The newer cultivars, Bounty and Advantage, have average bake scores of about 19.9 compared with the over-all average of 21.5. They make up 6 per cent of the crop to date. No defects, such as sprout, bug or heat damage have yet been detected.