Confection Sunflower Update:What's Been Happening In the Marketplace? What's the Outlook for 2011?

摘要

The confection market has grown and changed a lot in the past few years and shows promise for more growth in the near future. Hulled seed was the major use of confection seed in the 1980s. But that changed in the early 2000s, and now in-shell is in the driver's seat when it comes to industry focus and consumer demand.Why the change? In the late '90s, the industry began using oil-type seeds to produce hulled seed for the bakery market. This led to the development of "huller" varieties which took over as the feedstock for hulled seed. Consumers at home and abroad started demanding larger in-shell seeds than the older hybrids were producing, leading to a change in direction in hybrid confection sunflower seed breeding. The focus turned to producing more seeds that would go over a 20/64 screen rather than producing seeds for hulled seed production. Today, the confection industry is striving to produce hybrids with 80% of the production meeting the 20/64 seed size.