PARIS- Provisional quality results from this year’s French soft wheat harvest showed test weights and protein content, two key criteria for flour millers, were below the average of recent years, according to data published by farm office FranceAgriMer.
This year’s rain-affected soft wheat crop in France, the European Union’s biggest exporter, is set to bring the smallest volume since the 1980s and there has been concern that milling quality has also been affected.
For test weights, which indicate how much flour can be extracted from wheat, 30 percent of the crop scored above the common standard of 76 kilos (167 pounds) per hectoliter, down from a 76 percent average for 2019-2023, preliminary results from the survey conducted with crop institute Arvalis showed.
For protein content, 78 percent of the crop had protein content above 11 percent , down from a five-year average of 85 percent.
In contrast, Hagberg falling numbers, another measure of milling quality, were above average, with 99 percent of the crop showing readings above 240 seconds, compared with a 2019-2023 average of 87 percent.
The first round of results covered 61 percent of the expected harvest samples for test weights and protein and 53 percent for Hagberg numbers, FranceAgriMer said.
