There was great excitement on the closing day of the 2nd Global Milling Conference today when scientist Dr Sourav Kumar of the International School of Milling Technology at the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore, India, announced the introduction of a new 'milk' product made exclusively from wheat germ and which can sell at one-third the current retail price for milk - and which has twice the nutritional content.
Dr Kumar believes that this new product - which a team of 12 scientists developed over an 11-month period - offers India's malnourished an affordable nutritional drink that will aid growth and development in children and help overcome health issues afflicting adults, such as staving off the development of cancerous cells.
While there is a certain amount of skepticism associated with stories of this nature, on this occasion Dr Kumar samples of his milk product on display - along with a soup broth made from the same processed wheat germ and served to delegates at lunch - tasted like fresh drinking yoghurt. The muffin made from the same wheat germ product was rather dry but otherwise very acceptable!
While feeding the world's hungry might not be upper most in the mind of flour millers (but which this writer believes should be), there is an added advantage for millers who produce flour from this wheat germ product - the resulting flour has an extended shelf life when processed into bread and bakery products. Patents have been applied for the process involved as it is believed by the institute that this wheat germ product could have widespread appeal in many countries including those struggling to provide drinking milk for their populations and where flour milling is carried out. GFMT will carry a full report on this exciting development in the May-June 2014 edition.
Meanwhile, some 95 people attended the first day of the 2nd Global Milling Conference and some 55 on the second day. Number were not as high as expected due to the Glance Conference held on animal nutrition and involving feed manufacturing in Bangalore over the proceeding three days.
However, those who did attend heard from 20 highly quality speakers on topics ranging from millers and feeding a growing world population through to methods and techniques to avoid waste in the chain of production from harvest through to final product.
Many of the presentations have been videoed and will be made available on the GFMT website in due course. Other papers will be carried in up-coming editions of the GFMT magazine.
Perendale Publishers and Assocom-India co-hosted this event and plan to host the 3rd Global Milling Conference in India in September 2015.
The organisers would like to express their thanks to all the speakers and sponsors including our main sponsor VIV India, for their support in making this a successful event!
The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine GFMT which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.
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