Australia
March 31, 2009
Source:
GRDC's The Crop Doctor
A new wheat variety promising big health benefits to consumers
could be on the market by 2013 thanks to research work partly
funded by the Grains Research
and Development Corporation (GRDC).
It’s high amylose wheat and it promises a number of health
benefits, including better bowel health, preventing colorectal
cancer and improving control of blood glucose, which can help
manage diabetes and reduce obesity.
High amylose wheat (HAW) contains a lot of resistant starch that
is not digested in the small intestine, passing instead to the
large intestine, where it’s broken down in the colon by
bacteria.
GRDC Executive Manager, New Products, Vince Logan, said high
amylose wheat has been developed by Dr Matthew Morell and his
team at CSIRO and by the
French company Biogemma
over the last 10 years.
The team has already created HAW through genetic modification
and researchers were confident of breeding a conventional HAW
using lessons from genetic engineering.
It’s a novel initiative for the GRDC - one of the first wheat
varieties it’s been associated with that offers a consumer
health benefit, rather than just a production benefit.
Mr Logan thinks that while there’s a lot of interest in the
product around the world, it’s not yet clear how strong the
demand for this novel wheat will be.
To retain its value this specialist product will need to be
segregated and milled separately to maintain identity
preservation. It will also need a specialist marketing effort to
promote its unique health benefits to food manufacturers and
consumers.
While many wheat breeders around the world have tried and failed
to develop similar products, Mr Logan believes the strong
intellectual property position of the Australian/French
developers will put Australian growers in the box seat to gain
from the research.
The wheat is being produced by Arista Cereal Technologies Pty
Ltd.,a joint venture between the GRDC, the French company
Limagrain Cereales Ingredients and CSIRO’s Food Futures National
Research Flagship.
There’s no doubt that if high amylose wheat is readily accepted
by the market it could make a significant contribution to
community health. Some 80 per cent of deaths from colorectal
cancer are preventable, with diet a major factor.
High amylose wheat will add to the limited list of food products
available in Australia that have resistant starch. These include
high amylose maize, legumes, brown rice and bananas.
Western diets have lost a lot of the resistant starches that
were in the diet, with reduced consumption of whole grains,
stone-ground flours and even stale food, or food that’s been
cooked, then cooled.
Food containing high amylose wheat promises to be an extremely
convenient way for people to enjoy the health benefits of
resistant starch.
Other news
from Biogemma |
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The Crop Doctor is
GRDC Managing Director,
Peter Reading |
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