A top New Zealand pasta producer is looking for ways to make its pasta yellower to grab more market share.
To that end It has employed a young food technologist from Lincoln University to improve the quality of durum wheat, used to make flour for pasta.
TraceyReddecliffe, a Technology NZ fellow, has been co-opted by Goodman Fielder, the Foundation for Arable Research and Lincoln University to improve the yield from New Zealand's annual 5000-tonne crop. In response to demand for a yellower pasta - perceived by many to be better quality - the project will also consider how to add colour to the pale New Zealand pasta so it will look like rival products imported from Australia and Italy.
For Ms Reddecliffe, the project has been almost entirely hands-on. As well as testing soil properties in three specially sown Canterbury wheatfields and running test-sized milling exercises, she has done plenty of diagnostic "bite" testing in the laboratory.
New Zealand durum wheat - grown predominantly in Canterbury and Otago - is processed into flour at Goodman Fielder's South Island mills and turned into pasta at its Diamond production plant in Timaru.
But kiwi durum has an inconsistent yield and quality compared with overseas wheat, and fixing that would "identify benefits for the growers and the industry," said Ms Reddecliffe.
Three-quarters the way through the 24-month project, Goodman Fielder quality assurance manager Tom Moyle said the methods tested so far would yield better wheat.
"We don't have a complete answer as to what has an effect on the colour of flour and pasta."
Nevertheless, he hoped Goodman Fielder could grow its market share - about 60 per cent - by as much as 5 per cent.
More importantly, he said, a whole community of growers would receive better prices for better product. Ms Reddecliffe said the jointly funded project had provided a rare interface between arable growers and industry.
