The Council of Agriculture (COA) yesterday announced that it has developed the nation’s first strain of low-gluten wheat, Taichung No. 35, which can be cultivated on local farmland from November.
Due to changes in people’s dietary habits, wheat has become another staple after rice, COA Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station director Lin Hsueh-shih (林學詩) told a news conference in Taipei.
The nation imports between 120,000 and 130,000 tonnes of wheat per year, and demand for low-gluten wheat accounts for between 58,000 and 75,000 tonnes per year, he said.
Taichung No. 35, the council’s latest wheat strain, features strong resistance to common grain diseases such as rusts and powdery mildew, which makes it suitable for organic farming, he said.
“We hope the new species can gradually replace part of our wheat imports,” said station technical specialist Lin Hsun-shih (林訓仕), the main developer of the new strain.
The strain was derived from 1,200 wheat seeds imported from Mexico in 2010 for research and development, Lin Hsun-shih said.
Following a number of trials over the past seven years, the station found Taichung No. 35 to be most suited to the nation’s warm and humid weather, he added.
The nation’s dominant wheat strain is Taichung No. 2, which is cultivated on about 643 hectares, not including fields in Kinmen County, Lin Hsun-shih said.
While Taichung No. 2 yields 3.5 tonnes of wheat per hectare, with Changhua County’s Dacheng Township (大城) being a major producing area, Taichung No. 35 is expected to yield more than 4.3 tonnes per hectare and can be grown as far south as Tainan, he added.
“The new strain would offer farmers more choices, as the old breeds are medium and high-gluten wheat,” Lin Hsun-shih said.
In related news, the COA Department of International Affairs yesterday received a dozen business representatives from Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture, who purchased 5,600 bananas for the lunches of students of the prefecture’s 25 schools.
The council in late May estimated that banana production this year could reach 350,000 tonnes, an about 20 percent increase from last year.
However, the department said banana exports from January to last month totaled only 680 tonnes, with 679 tonnes sold to Japan and 1 tonne to China.
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