The strength of CWRS is hidden in its sheer versatility and its ability to jump from one role to the next. It’s ideal for the production of high-volume pan breads, it has well-balanced elasticity and extensibility for noodle applications, and it can be used as a flour improver when blended with weaker-protein wheat. Quite simply, it’s useful in just about any flour-based end product.

“That’s the thing about CWRS. It’s quite versatile,” says Elaine Sopiwnyk, Cigi’s director of grain quality. “A lot of times, what millers like about it is that you could potentially make different flours that have different qualities for a number of different end products.”

That versatility is borne out by the fact that countries from virtually every global region import CWRS  —  from Asia to the Middle East, plus Europe, Africa and North, South and Central America  —  all with their vastly different product requirements.

Available in three milling grades, CWRS is able to fill that tricky role of being able to efficiently satisfy protein content and quality with each market’s need to balance cost and customer specifications.

Its protein strength makes CWRS excellent in baking applications, as it is used to make not only pan bread but also various flatbreads, including pita, naan, chapati and even some hearth breads.

“CWRS is used a lot for pan breads, typically referred to as “high-volume” pan breads because bakers are looking for really good loaf volume, where the loaf is quite large in terms of height and size,” says Sopiwnyk.

But the bread wheat market is surprisingly diverse, Sopiwnyk adds. “You’d think a loaf of bread is the same everywhere, but it’s not.”

There are slight variations in pan breads among different countries due to a variety of factors. For example, different countries like different levels of sweetness in their bread, some have reduced salt requirements, and some processing conditions are unique to a particular region.

Regardless, with its bright flour colour and capacity for high water absorption, CWRS distinguishes itself by producing dough that mixes well with good processing and fermentation tolerance for all baking processes.

For a wide range of noodle and other Asian products, CWRS, with its well-balanced elasticity and extensibility, promises a smooth sheeting process. For markets that prefer pasta made from common wheat, CWRS may be used alone or in conjunction with durum for pasta production.

CWRS is also known for maintaining high flour milling yields with low protein losses. It has a strong but mellow gluten strength that ultimately results in a dough with good balance, making CWRS an ideal wheat “improver.”

“It is used as a blending wheat to improve overall quality while meeting cost requirements,” says Sopiwnyk. “Often, markets have access to domestic wheat or other lower-quality wheat that may have lower freight and overall costs, but these wheats might not have the quality that CWRS has. So in that case, they would blend in CWRS at 20 or 30 per cent to improve the quality.”

While CWRS’s capacity isn’t limitless, the breadth of applications it offers to so many different countries, all with different product requirements, is what gives this Canadian wheat an edge in the global wheat market.

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Gluten-free products have been on the radar for the pulse industry for some time, says Heather Maskus, project manager for pulse flour milling and food applications at Cigi.

“Companies we have worked with in the past have indicated this is an area where they see a major market opportunity for pulses,” Maskus says. “Pulses can provide gluten-free products with enhanced nutrition and health benefits, particularly by adding protein, fibre, and complex carbohydrates in the formulations.”

Many commercial gluten-free foods are high in starch-based ingredients derived from products such as rice and tapioca, but they are generally low in fibre, protein, vitamins and minerals, Maskus says. Some of the gluten-free products may contain more nutritious ingredients such as ancient grains, but they can be expensive while pulses are a cost-effective alternative.

“A lot of the commercial gluten-free formulations have a lot of egg in them as well and quite a bit of sugar,” Maskus says. “The egg is used to build the structure as it has a strong ability to whip and incorporate air. But using egg as an ingredient to provide the foundation is also an expensive way to make a product.”

Since April, Cigi has completed a global market analysis of gluten-free food products. The study shows an increase in gluten-free consumers, particularly in North America where, since 2009, gluten-free products have been increasing at an annual rate of 40 per cent.

Recently, Cigi began examining gluten-free domestic products to determine quality targets. “We are developing formulations for our in-house controls and will start incorporating pulses,” Maskus says. “So far, we have done some work using pulses in tortillas, started on pan breads, and may next try reformulating noodles and pasta.”

A major emphasis of the project will be the involvement of commercial gluten-free food processing companies, Maskus adds. Since gluten-free product development is a relatively new area, most of the work to date has been carried out by the companies themselves and not a lot of information is publicly available. Involving commercial partners will provide the added benefit of introducing pulses as functional, practical gluten-free ingredients.

“A lot of the products are very niche,” Maskus says. “So this is about presenting the idea of pulses as food ingredients to these companies and for us to understand what kind of quality they need.”

The type of pulses will at least partly depend on the objectives of the commercial partners, Maskus explains. “Often we look at opportunities for peas and lentils due to their volume but there is a lot of potential for other pulses as well. So it will be a combination of which pulses have the desired functionality, flavour properties and handling abilities for use in key product applications.”

Maskus says pulses in the Canadian industry have been primarily positioned in partnership with cereals  and, so far, about 70 per cent of Cigi’s pulse work has been conducted in combination with wheat.

“Since we have built our product development information using wheat in product applications, we now have to take a new approach to using pulses in these gluten-free applications,” Maskus says. “We are going to try something completely different by using pulses in combination with other cereals like corn or rice to create a new platform of knowledge. It definitely is a major opportunity for Canadian pulses as ingredients in this growing market.”

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Each fall Cigi (Canadian International Grains Institute) receives samples of the different wheat classes from grain companies which are then made into composite samples and evaluated for quality characteristics in end-use products, with the results then presented to industry and customers around the world.

As well, the Canadian Grain Commission (CGC) prepares standard samples representing the typical condition of each wheat class for grading by CGC grain inspectors. The samples represent grading factors (including mildew, frost/heat stress, and green or immature wheat) that are influenced by environmental growing conditions and are assessed visually (for more information visit grainscanada.gc.ca).

Across the Prairies in 2014, the higher incidence of mildew, caused by the fungus Cladosporium, is attributed to wet conditions at harvest, says Elaine Sopiwnyk, director of science and innovation at Cigi.

“Parts of Alberta received snow that resulted in some lodging of the grain where stalks fall over and get compacted by moisture that promotes spore growth,” Sopiwnyk reports. “As of early October, mildew accounted for almost 65 per cent of the downgrading of CWRS to No. 3, with even more in Manitoba but less in Saskatchewan. Other downgrading factors that seem high this year are frost/heat stress, sprout damage, and fusarium which is especially high in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.”

Mildew is non-toxic and causes a discolouration of wheat flour, Sopiwnyk says. The greyish colour can be undesirable in some end-products that require a high level of brightness or whiteness, such as for white pan breads or for some Asian products like steamed breads. “Some of these markets are really discriminating, and the brightness and whiteness of their product is very critical. CWRS, for example, is exported to so many markets with different end-product applications and quality requirements.”

In addition, Sopiwnyk points out that sometimes the wet conditions causing mildew may also cause additional degrading factors due to weathering that can affect flour and end-product quality. “Generally, mildew is an indication of the weathering that occurred. If you have grain that is wet at harvest, then there is also a possibility of sprout damage as well.”

Ashok Sarkar, Cigi senior adviser for technology, agrees that more than one degrading issue can be associated with a wet harvest. And while mildew dulls the colour of flour, the inclusion of some blackened parts of the wheat kernel in lower grades of durum wheat during milling can also add undesirable dark specks to durum semolina which could affect the appearance of pasta.

However, Sarkar says some markets that are more sensitive to price than quality are open to using wheat affected by mildew for blending with other flour for baked goods. “Even domestically there are baked products where mildew does not have an impact on quality,” Sarkar says. “But in places like Asia where noodles and steamed bread require a bright and white colour, wheat with high levels of mildew may not be acceptable.”

Sarkar says that a bleaching agent can be used during milling to whiten dull flour, but with only limited effect. “It’s all relative,” he says. “Mildew strictly affects colour while, on the other hand, I’d say something like frost damage is one of the more difficult grading factors to deal with from a milling and end-product quality standpoint.”

This year initial reports have indicated that mildew is not having too detrimental an effect on flour or crumb colour, Sarkar adds.

Cigi began presenting its harvest assessment to customers mid-fall and, together with the CGC and Cereals Canada, it will hold new crop seminars in Asia, Europe, South America, the Middle East, and North Africa.

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Funded by the Agriculture Funding Consortium, with food barley varieties supplied by the Alberta Barley Commission, a one-year project conducted by Cigi (Canadian International Grains Institute) is aiming to provide innovative milling techniques and knowledge that would enhance the competitiveness of barley and wheat flour in health food and ingredient markets.

Cigi’s milling and analytical services areas are carrying out the milling and analysis on site.

Food barley has a number of beneficial health properties. Consumption can reduce the risk of coronary heart disease, it can modulate blood glucose levels, and it may offset certain cancers. These benefits are attributed to beta glucan, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and vitamins contained in barley. Health Canada approved a health claim in 2012 for foods containing 1.0 gram of barley beta glucan as a way to lower cholesterol.

The milling project builds on previous research Cigi conducted in 2008-09 in which new opportunities for foods made with barley were identified and developed in partnership with international and domestic companies. Toward the end of the project, a U.K. bakery asked Cigi to try blending 15 per cent barley flour with wheat flour for pan bread, says Ashok Sarkar, head of milling technology at Cigi. “Rather than blending flours, it was decided to blend the grains and mill them together. The initial co-milling of barley and wheat was successful but not pursued further at the time.”

Since hulls need to be removed before milling barley, hulless barley is easier to work with, says Elaine Sopiwnyk, Cigi director of science and innovation, who is leading the project. However, the hulless food barley varieties (especially those that are “waxy” with lower levels of amylose, a component of starch) are sticky when milling. This can pose a problem for millers although waxy starch properties are also associated with higher levels of beta glucan. Blending barley with wheat appears to resolve this issue during the milling process.

“Wheat is coarser and more granular, which helps with sifting and prevents the barley flour from clogging the sifter screen perforations,” Sarkar explains, adding that the project will use hulless barley ranging between a normal starch type to fully waxy. “Just imagine flours sifting through fine fabric — if you add sand it will keep the screen clean.”

In 2005 Sarkar successfully milled Millhouse, the first registered non-waxy hulless food barley variety in Canada, at a relatively high extraction rate of about 74.6 per cent. “I said then we could actually someday pull barley from one bin and wheat from another and mill them together. But that was just a hypothesis and nothing was done. Then this request from a bakery customer happened later so we tried it.”

The current project came about when Cigi’s milling results were presented at a meeting of barley researchers at the Richardson Centre for Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals. Sarkar says the Alberta Barley Commission (ABC) was in attendance and subsequently recommended that Cigi apply for funding for further work.

“ABC helped review the project proposal and provided three food barley samples for us to work with — two tonnes each of CDC McGwire (normal starch), CDC Rattan (partial waxy), and CDC Fibar (full waxy),” says Sopiwnyk. “The varieties will be used to determine what blend of wheat and barley will provide optimum milling performance and nutrition in the flour as a healthy ingredient which will help us develop guidelines on milling barley for the industry. Right now the use of food barley is limited in North America, but this project has the potential to increase its use.”

Sopiwnyk recently returned from a Cigi mission to Japan with other industry representatives to investigate that country’s use of food barley where it is used in an array of products including barley flour, beta glucan extract, sochu (liquor), mugicha (barley tea), miso, pearled barley, and rice extenders. The group also met with Japanese industry associations and processors of barley products, many of whom are current customers of Canadian food barley.

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“We did a little bit in the past but this is the first time we’ve done it on this scale,” says Rex Newkirk, Cigi vice-president of research and innovation. “There was an opportunity to offer plant breeders the support that they require through early-generation testing,” Newkirk says. “We realized because of Cigi’s expertise in quality and our understanding of customers’ requirements that we’d be a good place to take on more of this type of work.”

Cigi worked with several breeders from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to analyze early-generation wheat-breeding lines, Newkirk says. “In the past we have had requests but weren’t set up to handle the volume. In the long term we hope to offer the service not only to government but to the industry.”

• More Cigi from Country Guide: Growing market

Newkirk explains that early-generation testing involves assessing the quality of thousands of extremely small grain samples which are then selected, discarded or culled. The plant breeder narrows it down to one line which then has to go through a very detailed set of tests and comparisons to other lines coming from other breeders.

“This year we tested several thousand samples of CWAD, CPSR, and CWRS, plus some soft wheats as well,” Newkirk says. “We borrowed a special micro-mill — a Quadramat Junior — for milling CWRS and CPSR and will be purchasing additional mills this upcoming year. For CWAD we used our Bühler lab mill which worked very well and bought a laboratory scale purifier for the semolina. We also purchased a mixograph with a 10-gram bowl so that we could evaluate the dough-mixing characteristics of small flour samples.”

The mixograph, which measures dough strength and protein quality while a dough is being mixed, enables Cigi to quickly analyze large numbers of small samples (watch the video). Cigi’s other lab dough-mixing equipment, such as its farinograph, are designed for evaluating larger flour samples and also take longer to complete a test. 

“The breeders require rapid tests where they can evaluate a particular parameter quickly,” says Elaine Sopiwnyk, Cigi director of science and innovation, noting that the grain samples received were a few hundred grams at most and flour extraction is only about 70 per cent. “They may only have a 60-gram sample to spare, so we may get 42 grams of flour from that to work with.

“This is really early on where small amounts of material are screened in hopes of finding the few lines that have potential,” Sopiwnyk says. “When the lines finally get to the Prairie Grains Development Committee, they have already gone through years of seed increases and testing.”

After going through sets of tests where lines are evaluated and compared, the PGDC determines which lines from both public and private breeders become registered varieties. Detailed data from across the Prairies is compiled and discussed at PGDC meetings held yearly in February. Early this year, Cigi also conducted tests on samples for companies submitting their lines to the PGDC.

“Farmers need new varieties and plant breeders need to make sure they have the tests they require so they can develop those varieties,” says Newkirk, adding that costs for testing are covered by the breeders. “Cigi is in a position to contribute because we understand the customers’ needs and want to make sure the system works well.”

The post A faster start appeared first on Country Guide.

The quality characteristics of CPSR — exceptional milling performance, medium protein levels and good protein strength — make it suitable for blending with other wheat flours, or for use on its own, Sarkar says. 

“CPSR flour has good protein quality and enormous blending potential, where you could use it with another wheat flour to increase or decrease protein as required,” Sarkar explains. “For example, you might blend it with a high-protein wheat like CWRS, where you don’t want to affect the protein quality too much, but you want to lower it for certain food applications. You can easily use CPSR for this because it’s quite strong with slightly lower protein than CWRS, so it can bring the protein down without affecting the functional qualities too much.”

CPSR is used in products such as hearth breads, flatbreads, crackers, noodles and pasta in countries around the world, particularly in South America and Asia.

“There are many food products made from medium-protein, medium-strength wheat,” Sarkar says. “CPSR can be used 100 per cent for bread that doesn’t require a very high volume, but still needs good dough strength like for French bread. And it can be used for a variety of noodle products.”

• More from Country Guide: Unsung champion

Sarkar says that international demand for CPSR in food applications changed in the mid-1990s with the new variety AC Crystal. “Before that, CPSR was more of a filler type of wheat and had no real identity of its own,” he says. “With the introduction of AC Crystal — which improved the milling quality, functional properties and overall benefits of using this type of wheat — people started looking at it as more of a wheat that could be used on its own.”

However, one issue for international markets is availability since much of the CPSR grown is sold domestically for feed and ethanol production. An advantage for farmers growing CPSR is high yields, significantly more than premium wheats such as CWRS, Sarkar says. “If we continue to grow CPSR in large quantities and countries know it is available every year in sufficient quantities so they can plan their wheat blends accordingly, then it will start to develop its own value in the marketplace.”

One advantage to millers using CPSR, instead of a medium-protein wheat from another country, is that Canadian quality standards provide cleanliness, consistency and uniformity without wide fluctuations in quality seen in other wheats. 

CPSR has a very good and consistent quality profile overall that can deliver benefits in multiple products, Sarkar says. “The flour quality includes good extraction, colour, dough strength for breads, and dough elasticity for noodle processing.”

Esey Assefaw, head of Asian products technology at Cigi, says the group has produced and evaluated various types of noodles made out of CPSR. “Out of all Canadian wheat classes, CPSR has a special quality suitable for white salted noodles,” Assefaw says. “What you’re looking for is good colour and good elastic texture that consumers in Asia prefer. CPSR, specifically the 5700 and 5701 PR varieties, for the first time came close to achieving the elasticity we’re looking for.”

Assefaw and other Cigi technical staff have recently met interested customers from countries such as Japan to discuss CPSR quality. “It has more than potential,” Assefaw says. “It’s a matter of supply. That’s the challenge. It’s a perfect wheat that complements a premium wheat like CWRS.”

The post Growing market appeared first on Country Guide.

But did you know there’s another wheat that is often overlooked, but an equally good milling wheat, albeit for a slightly different market? Quality characteristics of Canada Western Red Winter (CWRW) wheat make it a perfect choice for use in processing food products that require a high-quality wheat with low-to-medium protein levels. While it doesn’t have the high protein of a Hard Red Spring wheat, it actually outstrips it in some milling characteristics. 

“CWRW in particular has the best milling performance amongst all Canadian wheat classes in terms of flour yields, low ash content, and colour that is bright and stable which means the dough discolours very slowly,” says Ashok Sarkar, head of milling technology at Cigi (Canadian International Grains Institute). CWRW protein is guaranteed at a minimum of 11 per cent for the top two grades.

• From the Grainews website: Make the grade with winter wheat

“Anywhere U.S. HRW with 11.5 per cent protein is being used, CWRW can adequately fulfill those processing requirements,” he says. “It can be used for virtually any kind of medium-hard wheat-based food product, and with it customers also get the Canadian quality package which brings cleanliness, uniformity, improved yields, lower ash and better colour.”

CWRW has been traditionally in demand for feed markets. However, the wheat class is well-suited for food products such as hearth breads and flatbreads and in blends with soft wheat for crackers. The low ash content results in good flour for places such as China and throughout Southeast Asia. In some Asian countries flour bleaching occurs to obtain desired product brightness, and the possibility of banning the practice opens up greater potential use of CWRW.

“It’s still the best class for steamed bread because of its whiteness,” says Esey Assefaw, head of Cigi Asian products. “When it’s milled at the same standard milling procedure, same extraction rate and protein, side by side with other types of wheat, it gives the highest whiteness which is great for steamed bread because they want it as white as possible.”

Sarkar recalls that a number of years ago, when Cigi conducted an evaluation of wheat mixes for various food applications in Thailand, the mix for steamed bread used CWRW as the core wheat.

Domestic mills will sometimes use CWRW for blending to slightly lower the protein content of flour, he says. CWRW is also blended with soft wheat flour to add protein strength for certain baked products. “Yeast-based dough or fermented doughs used for crackers require strength, so using soft wheat doesn’t always give good results. That is why CWRW is blended 50-50 sometimes. It fits nicely because it’s got lower protein, and is not as hard.”

The Canadian system of protein segregation which, for Nos. 1 and 2 CWRW guarantees no less than 11 per cent protein, has helped ensure quality and consistency for end-use processing, Sarkar says.

Over the years Cigi has carried out quality evaluation of CWRW on behalf of customers and for technical missions overseas.  In September 2013, Sarkar and Assefaw demonstrated quality characteristics of CWRW varieties in milling and the processing of steamed bread and white salted noodles to customers at major milling companies in Japan, as well as South Korea, who had a limited awareness of its potential. Samples of newer wheat varieties from Canadian grain companies were compared to those used by the Japanese and Korean companies from competitor countries which generated positive results for CWRW varieties.

“CWRW is a very high-quality wheat for the food applications it’s used for,” adds Rex Newkirk, Cigi vice-president of research and innovation. “Yes, it has lower protein, but there are lower protein markets and it gives amazing flour yield. Sometimes when you hear or read about low-, medium-, and high-quality wheat, what is really being discussed is protein, not actual quality.”

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