Hailing from a region of Canada long-known as ‘the Breadbasket of the World’ because of the wheat grown here on the Prairies, as a farm writer I have been rather keenly aware of the importance of wheat.
The region was basically developed to grow the crop, and the export of high quality wheat has been an integral part of the region’s economy from the time of the earliest settlers.
But, in recent times wheat, which predominantly becomes flour, with a key product of that flour being white bread, the crop has lost some of its shine in terms of consumer interest. Certainly wheat flour remains important, and bread and related products are part of most of our diets, but it is not always seen by consumers as the healthiest option today.
In part because of the health concerns wheat, which once dominated farm crop rotations in western Canada has seen a decline, with canola, a crop noted for producing healthy oil, taking over as the key crop.
But farmers here can’t just abandon wheat either. The region is ideally suited to its production, and farmers here are also expert at its production. That combination makes it a crop well-suited to being produced in a way that means a reasonable return on crop inputs investment.
Research may hold the key to at the very least allowing wheat to maintain its current acres in terms of overall cropping, and it could push the crop back to the top of the heap in terms of importance as well.
There is little doubt moving forward agriculture will see new varieties of a variety of crops offering new properties that did not exist at viable levels to be useful. The new properties, whether achieved through traditional plant breeding methodologies, or by genetic modification, are going to push many crops into new and exciting niche markets.
Take for example a new type of wheat being grown in the Idaho, Washington state and Oregon in 2017. According to a recent article at www.producer.com, “the wheat is high in amylose, a type of dietary fibre that benefits digestive health and helps ward off Type 2 diabetes.
“Flour from the wheat is being marketed in North America as HealthSense.
“Australian scientists, in collaboration with French researchers, have been working on the high fibre wheat since 2006. They formed a company called Arista Cereal Technologies to commercialize the wheat and its unique health traits. Bay State Milling has the licence to sell the wheat and flour in North America.
“The Australian and French team of scientists boosted the fibre content by controlling two enzymes within wheat (using a conventional breeding approach).”
Whether the new wheat emerges as a major development is not the key here, but rather that its development of something new for a very old crop to open new markets based on current consumer demands.
Calvin Daniels is Editor with Yorkton This Week.
