World Grain - April 2019 - 56

MILLING OPERATIONS

Finding the sweet spot
While demand for hard wheat products has declined,
the news for soft wheat products is more promising
by M. Hikmet Boyacioglu

innovation and dynamism of the artisanal market, in particular bakeries, underlie cakes growth. oodles and pasta markets are also flourishing, with noodles making inroads into the
Western markets due to the rise of the Asian cuisine and pasta
gaining more popularity in Asia and the Middle East brought by
the rise of the Italian style restaurants.
SOFT WHEAT BREEDING
While hard wheat has for centuries been grown in numerous
countries on all five continents, soft wheat is less geographically diverse.
"Soft wheat (SRW and SW) is pretty much produced in the
United States," said Steve Mercer, vice-president of communications for U.S. Wheat Associates. Canada has a limited
amount of SRW on the east coast and some SW on the west
coast, but the production is small and exports total 200,000
tonnes in a good year. ther countries really don t produce
soft wheat with special classes like the U.S. and Canada.
Australia has a group of low protein wheat that can be used
to make many soft wheat products, but the genetics are different and ASW is not really a soft wheat.
The U.S. epartment of Agriculture US A estimated SW
wheat production of about . million tonnes and SRW production of million tonnes in
. According to U.S. Wheat
Associates, ntario, Canada, produced . million tonnes of
SRW wheat in
.
Both public and private breeding institutions continuously
test experimental lines using traditional and novel breeding
methods to develop new varieties considering yield, disease
resistance and, more importantly, for improved end use quality.
enerally, soft wheat varieties have been bred to yield flour
containing less protein than hard wheats, about 8% to 11%
versus
to
protein, respectively. urthermore, hard
April 2019 / World Grain / www.World-Grain.com

©prudkov - stock.adobe.com

While global demand for hard wheat-based products such as
bread has declined in recent years as consumers have shifted toward protein-rich, low-carbohydrate diets, there's more promising news regarding products made from soft wheat flour.
"There are some considerable sweet spots within the soft
wheat market," said Pinar Hosafci, industry manager, packaged food, uromonitor International.
Cakes, cookies, crackers and Asian-style noodles are among
the soft wheat flour based products that are gaining in popularity.
Flours produced from soft textured kernels possess lower
levels of starch damage, have lower water absorption, and
smaller particle si e distributions than hard wheat flours.
Hence, their preferential use in different products. Hard
wheats primarily are utilized in bread production, whereas
soft wheats are used to make cakes, cookies, crackers, pastries, donuts, biscuits, waffles, muffins, pancakes, pie crusts,
flat breads and some Asian style noodles. ne commonality
of soft wheat products is that most of them are chemically
leavened, unlike hard wheat products, which are usually
yeast leavened.
Hosafci notes that cookies and cakes offer the best prospects.
"Euromonitor predicts that the global cookies market will
reach $76 billion in 2019, up from $60 billion in 2014, growing
at an impressive
CA R over the next five years, he said.
"The majority of this growth comes from emerging markets of
the Middle East and Africa and Latin America, where cookies
are the most affordable and popular snack of choice, prompting
both local and multinational companies to innovate into novel
occasions like breakfast and target groups like children and elderly.
"Cakes is another lucrative category surpassing $15 billion
in
, with Asia acific taking the lead. The unprecedented

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World Grain - April 2019

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