The Rural Voice, 1995-09, Page 10WELLESLEY LOADING CHUTES
CATTLE CHUTES
ROUND BALE FEEDERS
See our products at the Weber Farm
Service display, at the International
Plowing Match
September 19.23/95, Ayr, Ontario
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CATTLE CHUTE
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• Heavy duty construction
TILMAN SHERK
R.R. #3
Wellesley, Ontario
519-656-3338
519-656-3429 evenings
6 THE RURAL VOICE
Scrap Book
Chicory explored for sweetener use
Corn could have a new rival for
production of high fructose
sweeteners (I -IFS) and food fibre
ingredients if experiments carried
out by St. Lawrence Techno-
logies, an Ontario -based research
and development firm, prove
successful.
For the past three years the
company has been investigating
the cultivation of chicory in
Ontario and with extraction of
HFS from the roots of the plant.
With support from the National
Research Council and
OMAFRA's Food Processing
Research Fund the company has
been processing its chicory crop
in a pilot plant to investigate the
efficiencies of inulin and HFS
production.
Part of the reason for the
commercial interest in chicory is
its ease of processing compared to
the complex process required for
the production of HFS from corn.
Corn starch is a natural polymer
of glucose, and starch hydrolysis
must be followed by the
additional steps of glucose
isomerization and chroma-
tographic absorption to produce
high fructose corn syrup.
Currently only a small number
of European companies produce
ISS from chicory on a
commercial basis. While a pound
of corn yields more HFS than a
pound of chicory, chicory's per
acre yield is far higher. Test plots
show yields consistently more
than 50 tonnes per hectare with
highs of 72, yielding an I -IFS dry
weight of 8.5 tonnes per ha.
compared to corn's 3.88.
Chicory also yields inulin, used
in Europe to add fibre to foods but
just now being explored in North
America. It can not only add a
source of dietary fibre but can
function as an active ingredient. A
variety of functions are possible,
including thickening, stabiliz-
ation, textural enhancement and
fat replacement.°
—Source: Agri food Research
Coming next, blue wheat, purple wheat?
We've had white wheat. We've
had red wheat. But prairie farmers,
one plant breeder says, could soon be
growing fields of blue wheat.
Speaking at the Cropportunities
Conference at the University of
Saskatchewan in July, Pierre Hucl
told farmers and grain industry
officials that new crops are on the
way to fill specialty markets. He
predicted that spring spelt, now
imported from Eastern Canada and
Europe, would soon be grown on the
prairies. But he really got attention
with his comments about blue wheat.
The wheat isn't blue on the
outside, but it does contain a layer of
blue aleurone beneath the seed coat,
similar to the blue corn that's used to
produce specialty corn chips. There's
not enough of the blue material in the
grain to get blue flour or bake blue
bread, Hucl said. But if it was
properly processed there's no reason
you couldn't make blue crackers. It's
a good marketing tool for corn, he
reasoned, so why not for wheat?
Over in New Zealand purple
wheat is already commercially
cultivated and processed, he said. It's
used to add colour to multi -grain
breads.
Hucl said specialty wheats have a
good, but limited, future. "The large
processors will not be interested.
This is for what I call the 'micro -
millers'," he said. "I think we're
talking about tens of thousands of
acres for some of these specialty
wheats."
Unfortunately government
funding agencies haven't put things
like blue pigmented wheat very high
on their research priority list, he said,
and told him to seek private industry
funding. He half jokingly put out a
call for funds at the conference. "I
have a line that's fully developed and
we could be multiplying the seed
within 12 months," he told those in
attendance.°
— Source: The Western Producer
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