Follow your passion in order to find your purpose. This is the mantra of food scientist and University of the Free State (UFS) PhD student
Schae-Lee Olckers,
whose research is set to improve wheat quality by identifying which types of wheat are better able to tolerate stress, and which proteins are most important for producing high-quality bread.
“By grasping this, it is possible to ensure that we continue to have a stable supply of good quality wheat and bread, even in the face of climate change,” says Olckers, who believes wheat is one of the most important food grains in the human
diet, and one of the most important staple cereal crops in the world.
Olckers is a food scientist at
StartWell Foods (Pty) Ltd, a non-profit organisation that produces high-quality extrusion products for feeding schemes around the country.
The products help to eliminate stunted growth among children.
Improving wheat breeding programmes
This research could help us find ways to adapt to climate change and continue to produce high-quality wheat and bread for people around the world. – Schae-Lee Olckers
Her research focuses on examining different types of wheat and investigating how proteins are affected by stressors like heat and drought, to understand how these stressors impact the quality of bread. She uses new proteomic methods to look at the different
proteins in the wheat flour, to gain a better appreciation of how gluten proteins react to stress.
In this study Olckers is able to see how the proteins change in the various wheat cultivars, helping us to understand how the different types of wheat perform in baking, and how the proteins affect the final product.
She collaborates with the
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, that releases new wheat cultivars for developing countries. Their aim is to develop
wheat cultivars that maintain their quality in different environments. To investigate the performance and characteristics of the seeds, both in the field and in the laboratory, CIMMYT did the field trials, quality assessment, and supplied the
seeds for high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and proteomics analysis.
Finding ways to adapt to climate change
She believes that understanding how these stressors impact the production of bread-baking quality in wheat will help scientists gain important insights into how climate change affects our food supply.
“Taking into consideration the current and projected intensifying heat and water deficit stresses, it is crucial to improve the understanding of these phenomena in order to implement new breeding strategies for sustainable wheat quality. This
research could help us find ways to adapt to climate change and continue to produce high-quality wheat and bread for people around the world,” Olckers says.