GrainsWest Tech 2020

Tech 2020 grainswest.com 21 composition of the plants,” said Karunakaran. The CLS then made agriculture one of its four strategic priorities in 2017. Karunakaran is now leading this expansion. Sixteen per cent of the research project proposals submitted to the CLS are agriculture-based, but Karunakaran is working hard to grow that number to 25 per cent in coming years. This will include more research applications dealing with food, plants, animals and animal feed. FROM FIELD TO FOOD As it is for soil, the science of bread is deceptively complex. A team of Canadian scientists turned to the CLS to study dough for the purpose of baking healthier bread. “Bread is almost as ancient as mankind, but there are still so many unanswered fundamental questions about how its quality is affected,” said Filiz Koksel, assistant professor of food and nutrition at the University of Manitoba. “Breadmaking is an art and a science. We have to understand what’s happening at a molecular level, so we’ll be able to provide nice high-quality and high-consistency bread.” Koksel is collaborating with scientists at the universities of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in devising strategies to reduce or eliminate salt in bread. In 2004, Health Canada recommended that the average Canadian needed to reduce their daily sodium intake by one third. Bread and baked goods alone contribute 20 to 30 per cent of our total daily sodium intake. “There’s not an easy solution to eliminate salt completely in baked goods like bread. Salt not only affects end-product quality characteristics, but when we play with the amount of salt in the bread formula, we are changing its handling qualities during processing,” said Koksel. Reducing salt can make dough stickier, causing problems with manufacturing equipment during processing. It also affects the gas-holding properties of the dough, which in turn affects the texture of the bread. In the process of reimagining bread formulas to reduce salt, the research project looked at other factors including which wheat cultivars perform better in low-sodium bread and how mixing time affects final loaf quality.