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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-02-20 Daily Xml
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NATIONAL OAT BREEDING PROGRAM

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (15:14): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries a question about oats.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS: Developing varieties of grains with attributes that help them to thrive in our climate and adapt to our soils to provide better yields has been the work that plant breeders have toiled over since agriculture began in Australia. I can remember when ripe wheat was over half a metre high, but new varieties ripen without having to put so much energy into the stalk and are much shorter. Can the minister advise the chamber of recent developments in South Australia that are creating new oat varieties?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for State/Local Government Relations) (15:15): I thank the honourable member for his most important question. It is true that oats are not just oats anymore, thanks to the efforts of the oats breeding team at the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI).

Some of the targets of the National Oat Breeding Program, which I am proud to say that SARDI leads, are nutritional enhancements, including improved soluble fibre and antioxidant content. These types of improvements are combined with better taste profiles in plants that also give higher yields of better quality grain, all of which means that industry is keen to take part in the breeding program.

The work, which is being led by SARDI plant breeder Dr Pamela Zwer, uses a range of techniques, including classical plant breeding, markers to identify the traits of interest in the young seedlings, and chemical and sensory evaluation to ensure that the oats meet millers' and consumers' needs. Developing new varieties of oats is undertaken in partnership with the Grains Research and Development Corporation, the South Australian Grain Industry Trust, the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, the Uncle Tobys company (owned by Nestlé and Cereal Partners Worldwide), AEXCO, SARDI, and the Department of Agriculture and Food WA. The broad scope that the partners bring to the project ensures that traits of interest, which are likely to find a market, have a much greater chance of being developed.

Oats are not just a necessary part of people's morning muesli in summer and their winter porridge, which many of us enjoy, but they also enhance your health and help keep you well. Oats are high in soluble fibre, which helps maintain a healthy weight and helps to reduce the incidence of diabetes, as well as keeping the heart healthy by lowering cholesterol. One specialist development has been oats which have a higher beta-glucan level and, importantly, it has been found that the higher level of this soluble fibre lowers cholesterol. Obviously, that is a very important health trait.

This innovation has resulted in SARDI oat varieties accounting for up to 85 per cent of the 160,000 tonnes of milling oats grown in south-east Australia. Another of the program's outstanding varieties, Mitika, now accounts for more than 80 per cent of the oats used by Uncle Tobys Australia, I am told, in very popular porridge and muesli bar snacks. This variety has high grain yield potential and improved disease resistance, as well as increased beta-glucan compared to other oat varieties.

The National Oat Breeding Program is not just people in white coats milling around a lab and boiling up things in test tubes: it maintains a strong focus on consumer and customer taste and quality enhancements, and returns for growers by way of improved yields and disease resistance. For example, I am informed Uncle Tobys uses mini mill to test new lines for milling quality and taste. This takes a lot of the unknown out of releasing varieties which might have superior qualities and also, I should say, deliver taste attributes which are, obviously, very important to consumers in the marketplace.

The improved hulling and milling qualities of varieties are also very important, you will be pleased to know, as health-enhancing attributes. If an oat does not hull and mill well, for example, if it is too gluey, then the oat will be less likely to be used by food processors. It is likely to slow down production and make production of goods more complex. Consequently, the SARDI team makes sure that their new oats perform at all levels in the chain. The improved hulling and milling qualities of the Mitika and Yallara have assisted in improved hulling yields and also efficiencies for the SA family-owned Blue Lake Milling, based in South Australia's South-East.

Blue Lake Milling last year made a multimillion dollar investment in a new hulling facility at Bordertown, giving it the capacity to increase output to 100,000 tonnes of raw oats a year.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: They are very good operators. Now employing 100 people at Bordertown and Dimboola in Victoria, the company supplies flaked oat products, flours and pre-mixes to both domestic and export markets.

The next generation of new oats include Wombat, the first dwarf milling variety with cereal cyst nematode resistance and tolerance, and Dunnart, with CCN and improved resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus. A third milling variety, Bannister, has been released in Western Australia and is due to be widely available in eastern Australia in a couple of years' time, and SARDI is celebrating 20 years of delivering high quality scientific solutions to primary industries.

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