Farm Director, KC Sheperd, had the chance to visit with Forrest Hett, Program Manager with Farm Strategy LLC, talking about meeting consumer’s needs with innovative traits in wheat.
“We test a lot of grain that is out in the countryside, whether it is in a field or a bin or in some sort of elevation somewhere, and we deliver that as an ingredient to large bakeries or mills that are looking for it,” Hett said.
Hett said Farm Strategy looks for the end-use signals of what mills and bakeries want and then tests for those qualities in the countryside to find what the mills and bakeries are looking for so they can move it to them.
“We partner with a lot of grain storage facilities and they do a lot of testing as the wheat comes in with the growers that want to be in that program and so as those grain facilities move that in, we get a good test on what that looks like for baking quality, not just what is done as the truck comes in, but the baking qualities for the end-use they are looking for,” Hett said. “We partner with those guys, and it takes a lot of time to get through all those tests.”
As for gluten extraction that takes place at the gluten plant, Hett said they are most interested in being able to exclude part of the vital wheat gluten used at bakeries to perform to their needs to eventually develop a supply chain of wheat that can exclude part of that to help save money and clean the label up a little.
“BX7 is a trait that Brett Carver and his team developed, and it has what we call stability,” Hett said. “Instead of being in the 8, 9 and 10-minute range, we have even seen it up in the 70-plus minute range and what that means is you can mix the bread longer, and hopefully, in the end, we can exclude some of the vital wheat gluten that is included in that bread recipe, so it is a trait that carries a lot of value once it hits the dough and we want to hopefully be able to bring some of that value back to the growers who are growing it and the people who are helping keep that through the supply chain.
Hett said today’s consumers want fewer steps and cleaner labels with fewer ingredients. BX7 is a trait that performs very well when baking, Hett said, so it can help get rid of some of the ingredients on the back label of bread.
“We have to keep the BX7 trait and the wheat that is grown that has it segregated off, so we have partnered with grain storage facilities here in Oklahoma and Kansas that if they are growing that, we will keep it segregated off and then we have end use capability to get that into mills and bakeries that see value in that,” Hett said. “We want that network to go wider. It can’t get out into the countryside because if we have the BX7 trait mixed into the 1 percent across all wheat, it doesn’t do much for the industry, so we want to keep it valuable, and as itself, so it can go into those recipes and make a difference.”
Click the LISTEN BAR below to hear more from KC Sheperd and Forrest Hett on wheat traits to improve quality for the consumer.
