Crop & Environment Research Centre

Food & Feed Raw Material Quality

Consumers and retailers are becoming more discriminating about food quality, and good quality raw materials for both human food and farm livestock feed are an essential starting point. In addition, increasing liberalisation of world trade is creating pressure to maximise efficiency of use of food raw materials with minimal wastage.

A wide range of crops are being studied at Harper Adams for ways of improving quality.

Mycotoxins

Contamination of cereal grain before harvest by mycotoxin-producing fungi is a problem world-wide, but little is known of their occurrence in the UK. The Home-Grown Cereals Authority and the Food Standards Agency are funding a five-year programme of work to survey the incidence of the problem in this country.

Contact: Dr Simon Edwards

Bruising damage

Impact damage during harvest and handling of potato tubers is a serious problem leading to rejection by supermarkets. Bruised sugar beet roots lead to rots and difficulty in processing. A biochemical approach has been taken to understand these problems.

Contact: Professor Andy Cobb

Wheat for poultry feed

Wheat grain is a major component of poultry diets. Several aspects of wheat grain have been studied for effects on suitability of grain for production efficiency of chickens.

Contact: Dr Peter Kettlewell or Dr Paul Rose

Wheat for flour milling

Each year about 4 million tonnes of wheat are milled into flour, largely for baking, in the UK. Recent research into the quality of wheat for milling has included understanding the mechanisms of pre-harvest formation of the deleterious enzyme alpha-amylase in wheat grain and exploiting climate science to develop long-range forecasts of wheat grain quality.

Contact: Dr Peter Kettlewell

Wholecrop wheat silage

Wholecrop wheat provides an alternative forage for dairy farmers throughout the UK, but is of particular interest to farmers in the north and west of the country where cereals grow well and the use of maize silage may be limited. An MDC funded study, conducted jointly with the Animal Science Research Centre at Harper-Adams, has evaluated the effect of processing the crop, cutting height and crop maturity at harvest on utilisation of wholecrop wheat by dairy cows. Current work is attempting to define optimum inclusion rate of wholecrop wheat in the forage component of the diet.

Contact: Dr Russell Readman or Dr Liam Sinclair