By Dr. Michael Peel
NDSU Extension Small Grains Specialist

Home

E-Mail

Back

Prairie Grains is the official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat, Inc., and the Minnesota Barley Growers Association.

Annual wheat imports in all of south Asia range from 15.2 to 12.2 million metric tons. U.S. market share has ranged from 31% to 52%, with hard red spring wheat averaging 39% of this. It’s an important market and one with potential for increased U.S. market share.

A complaint of hard red spring wheat from the U.S. was lack of uniformity both within and between shipments. Relative to other suppliers, variability in kernel size and test weight was much greater. Variability in protein content and gluten strength was also a concern. The concern was relative to within a year, and not year-to-year variability.

Cleanliness was also a big issue throughout the region. The most sophisticated market in the region, Japan, has dockage specs of 0.5 % and will probably lower it to 0.3%. Shrunken and broken kernels, unthreshed florets, weed seed, and other foreign material are some of the specific complaints. Particularly problematic is buckwheat, which is nearly impossible to remove from the grain. Noodles made from flour milled from wheat contaminated with wild buckwheat has dark specks making is less desirable to the final consumer.

The major use of wheat in this region is for bread, noodles and confectionery products (sponge cake cookies and so on). Hard red spring wheat, both Dark Northern Spring and Northern Spring, is used in these markets for bread and to a lesser extent some noodles. The strong gluten characteristics of U.S. spring wheat has made it a staple in bread flour for blending, or a higher protein flour in countries with a less sophisticated bakery system. Brightness of the final product, both bread and noodles, was a theme that consistently emerged from everyone that we visited. Noodles made from spring wheat tended to be darker than desirable, and the color deteriorated with time.

Growing demand for white wheat

The fastest growing segment of the markets in this region is the noodle market. There are several types of noodles including udon, a large square noodle popular in Japan, Chinese or ramen, and alkaline, a fresh noodle with a yellowish/creamy hue. Some spring wheat is used to make these noodles, especially in less developed regions. However, hard white wheat is preferred. This is because noodles made from white wheat typically have a brighter appearance, whereas noodles from red wheat more often have a darker, greyish hue. The yellow/creamy hue desired in alkaline or fresh noodles is very difficult to obtain from red wheats. Noodle texture is also important and is a criterion used in selecting wheats for noodle production.

Since Australia produces exclusively hard white wheat, they have the advantage over us in marketing wheat to the Asian noodle market.

In addition to hard white wheat for noodles, the point was consistently made that these markets would just as soon buy hard white wheat with gluten characteristics similar to DNS for bread products. Specifically a hard white wheat with low ash at a high extraction, bright flour, high falling number, short mix time and long stability. While these are tall orders, they do give variety development programs for hard white wheat selection.

The new U.S. hard white wheat (HWW) market class presents tremendous opportunity for increased market share of wheat in the Asian markets. However, attention will have be paid to details such as uniformity, acceptable noodle and bread making characteristics. This does present a dilemma in that the characteristics desired of a good noodle are different than those for good bread baking. High protein and high gluten are desirable for bread, while a low to mid protein range with less gluten strength is desired for a good noodle wheat. The differences in desirable quality characteristics between the two suggest that segregation based on variety type or protein content will be needed to meet the conflicting quality requirements.

These are indications that marketing wheat to our overseas customers will become more complex. But these are market signals that all of us- from wheat breeders to extension agronomists, producers to merchandisers- cannot ignore. There will continue to be a market for our hard red spring wheat, but we also need to focus attention on the growing hard white wheat market.

Breeding programs in Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Idaho to name a few are all developing hard white wheat varieties. This is a new segment to wheat production that will make U.S. wheat more competitive on the world market. However, to see this market develop, hard white wheat will have to be produced on a very large acreage scale. Otherwise it will be too cost prohibitive to interest importers.

Producers will play a key role in the success of hard white wheat as a market class in the U.S. I believe it will be driven by quality more than anything else. Intrinsic quality characteristics are determined largely by the varieties grown, and therein lies a catch-22: we have a free market system with many varietal choices and no single entity that controls varietal release. The downside with these choices is the potential for variability in quality, one of the big complaints of the Asian market.

If we produce a crop with the best quality in the world and everyone knows it, marketing will be less of a challenge. Selecting varieties with the best combination of favorable agronomic characteristics for an area combined with a good quality profile ensures market respectability. Moreover, use of sound production practices that reduce the potential of weed, insect and disease pests will not only improve yield but reduce dockage (especially wild buckwheat), shrunken and broken kernels, and improve test weight.

Producers do have a direct impact on foreign and domestic markets. The variety and production choices you make individually have a large impact collectively on how much wheat our foreign markets import. In the grand scheme of things, it is an influence on export demand and ultimately, the price.