For more than a decade, the sectors involved in wheat production and marketing in Argentina have been making efforts to achieve wheat production classification to satisfy international market requirements. Argentine has different wheat qualities, ranging from outstanding bread baking quality to hard and semi-hard wheat, similar to those in Canada, the United States, Australia and countries of EU. Their quality is lost once they are mixed up, and they can only be offered in the international market ascommodity wheat. This practice proves to be disadvantageous when compared to competing countries that classify their cereal production. A small group of technicians, specializing in wheat, started working years ago on a project to differentiate varieties according to quality. Wheat varieties were divided into three groups on the basis of a fairly large amount of data from the Yield and Quality Trials Net (RET) performed on around 50 commercial varieties, in 28 different locations, within the whole wheat-growing area. Group 1 represents wheat of the highest class, type correctors, Group 2 represents wheat for Argentina's traditional breadmaking with 8 to 16 h of fermentation time and Group 3 represents wheat for direct bread-making of less than 8 h offermentation time. Each group of varieties represents a different CLASS (TDA 1, TDA 2 and TDA 3) of wheat, and each class provides a different end-use, diversifying the offer of Argentinean wheat in the local and international markets. In the near future, Argentina should be exporting different wheat classes with different levels of protein to satisfy a world market that is becoming more and more service demanding.
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