Wheat is one of Australia largest export commodities. Australia remains the preferred supplier of wheat grain to overseas markets. Have you got your heart set on crop growing? It is profitable to be a wheat producer.  

Wheat (Tritium aestival) is a cereal (or grass crop) that has many uses. When wheat is processed – or milled – the result is highly marketable food products for people and animals. 

Let’s explore some of the types of wheat:

Some wheat is ground into flour to make bread; this type is called hard wheat. It must have a high gluten content to provide the dough with elasticity and strength to stretch and rise during the proving stage of bread making.

Biscuit wheat is generally lower in protein and is usually crumblier in texture when cooked, it’s often called soft wheat.  The flour produced from soft wheat – called cake flour - doesn’t require as much moisture to make dough and it spreads sideways during the cooking process making it ideal for biscuits. It’s fair to say, soft wheat can be difficult to grow. To achieve a high yield, with low protein content, requires careful nitrogen management. This wheat is usually grown under irrigation as it needs unlimited moisture.

Durum wheat is a type of wheat specifically grown to produce pasta. This type of wheat is yellow in colour has high gluten content, is strong and elastic. It is used to make couscous as well as pasta, and other products but is unsuitable for cakes and biscuits where a soft texture is required.  

Noodle wheat is a hard wheat that needs to be particularly white in colour (for example Japanese Udon noodles) but need to be yellow in colour for Chinese noodles, so often they are a blend of hard wheat that meet the colour and strength characteristics of the noodle they are used to produce.

Feed wheat is used for livestock food. They need to be high in protein, minerals, and nutrients. They also need to be high in gluten which helps the pellets bind together in stock feed manufacture.

Some wheat varieties are developed specifically as feed wheat while other bread wheat may end up sold as feed wheat as they don’t make the quality specifications at harvest (this could be due to weather damage or other factors).

Adequate nutrients at each stage of plant development are essential for maximum economic yields of wheat. If you are serious about getting started in wheat production, always think first of the ground layer that will feed the crop. What can soil requirements mean for wheat growing efforts…?

Well…. The answer is wheat is grown successfully on a wide range of soils because it is comparatively tolerant of different conditions. Acid soils are unsuitable for some cultivars. Be aware of varietal differences in sensitivity to acid soils and boron toxicity. If yields are to approach their climate potential, then soil conditions need to be considered carefully. To grow high yielding crops the soil should be well to moderately well drained, have good physical characteristics and no barriers to root penetration, have no extremes of pH, be non-saline and have an adequate nutrient supply. Nutrients needed include nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and zinc.

To learn more about soil and nutrient requirements in wheat production, you can find out more about crop growing and farming in online courses at ACS Distance Education. ACS offers options such as our Short Course in Sustainable Agriculture, or for around 100 hours of study you can attain a highly desirable Statement of Attainment in Agronomy, or aim high and achieve a certificate in Agriculture and Crop Production with full tutor support, practical tasks and assessments.