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Cracking the Wheat Inspection Dilemma
| Article
# : |
15680 |
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Section : |
NATURAL SCIENCE
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1989 |
1,451 Words |
| Author
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Kay Garrett
Kay Garrett is the editor of Perspectives, the quarterly
research magazine of the Kansas State University in Manhattan,
Kansas. |
From known origins in the Euphrates valley nearly 9,000 years ago, wheat, the staff of life, has emerged as the world's most versatile cereal grass. It is the only grain that can be grown from the Artic Circle to the equator. On all five continents wheat is a major crop, with the USSR and China being the main producers, followed by the United States as a distant third. The United States is a major wheat exporter while the USSR and China are major wheat importers, because in the United States other grains, such as corn, supplement wheat as feed for livestock.
The United States is the center of breeding wheat for combinations of traits that may better maximize the value of wheat to growers, millers, and bakers. However, so many different varieties have been introduced that human inspectors can no longer satisfy the needs of the wheat market.
From thousands of different fields, hundreds of different varieties of wheat are brought by the truckload to the local grain elevators of the American Midwest. Billions of kernels have started their journey through a complex distribution network that leads finally to the millers who make the flour and the bakers who produce breads, cereals, and other wheat products consumed daily by millions of Americans.
Complications arise for millers and bakers, however, because different wheats behave differently when made into flour and then into a multitude of baked goods. Wheats can be hard or soft, and lack of knowledge about hardness mixtures can cause problems during milling or baking. Flour streams at the mills tend to plug up, for example, and millers must spend extra time adjusting the equipment to achieve proper end products. Higher flow rates in certain parts of the mill also result in excessive wear on equipment.
A further complicating factor is the price differential between hard and soft wheat which at times provides an economic incentive for traders to mix hard and soft wheats without notifying the buyer. The wheat market clearly needs a standardized process for grading wheat.
The U.S. Federal Grain Inspection System (FGIS) currently relies on a traditional visual classification method that has inherent human limitations of speed and accuracy. This procedure, although far from perfect, was adequate for the U.S. wheat market until recent years, when breeders began introducing new varities of wheat whose visual characteristics and processing properties are not correlated in the usual
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