Locally Made Pita Brings New Freshness to Discerning Consumers

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

If you have been disillusioned about the freshness of the pita bread you bought at the supermarket, rejoice!

A few months ago, a new baker of pita bread and other Arabic delicacies opened its doors in Regina. His name is Boutros Skaf, and his company is called Prairie Food Products. The bakery is located in Regina’s industrial area near the corner of Park Street and Fourth Avenue East. It may seem like a quaint location, but it’s generating 20 to 30 pita sandwiches from local area workers during every lunch hour.

“We have set up a counter at the front of the bakery. Today, we have Mediterranean beef on the go at the counter,” Skaf says.

“Prairie Food Products is the only Saskatchewan-based manufacturer of pita and wraps. Certified pita and wrap experts make our products. We use top quality Saskatchewan ingredients, and we are confident that, once you try our pitas and wraps, you will notice the difference.”

Walking through the baking shop is like entering another world of traditions. The facilities required to make this type of bread are as complex as the most modern assembly lines. Lightly floured, felted conveyor belts gently take the bread from flour to baked finished product, ready for distribution, as if the baking plant operated as an impeccably rehearsed regimental parade.

“We figure we can basically supply the entire Saskatchewan market, as our business plan attests,” says Skaf. “We have made a successful entry into smaller grocery and specialty stores, but we are facing a challenge in convincing the local grocery giants of the value of providing a fresher local product, instead of bringing in pitas from Calgary or even Vancouver.

“We certainly appreciate the support we are getting from local restaurants, which have chosen to rely on our product. Our families are dedicated to being community leaders, and we believe re-investing in Saskatchewan is important. We are proud of who we are, and we want everyone to know we live, work and play in Saskatchewan by choice,” Skaf says.

“We are continually striving to provide consistent, superior quality, fresh products to consumers, distributors and retailers alike. We believe that, with hard work and dedication, we will become the market leader in the production and distribution of pitas, wraps and specialty breads in Saskatchewan and Western Canada.”

The future truly is wide open for this young company as it researches and explores expanding its product line to include a number of ready-made consumer products such as pastas, lasagna, pizza and calzones, just to name a few.

For more information, contact:

Boutros Skaf
General Manager
Prairie Food Products
(306) 790-7482
www.prairiepita.com

Seed Dormancy Modelling Provides Insight Into Forage Germination

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

It has long been recognized that uniform seeding emergence is critical to stand establishment and production in forage crops, but a lack of comparative data between what happens in the lab and in the field made seeding practices more of a trial and error process, until now.

A recent Agriculture Development Fund (ADF) supported research project, conducted by the University of Saskatchewan, has shed new light on this issue, through dormancy modeling.

Dr. Yuguang Bai of the Department of Plant Sciences was the lead investigator on the project, with Doctors Bruce Coulman and Jim Romo as co-investigators. Mr. Jie Qiu, currently a Ph.D. candidate at the department, formed his M.Sc. thesis based on this project.

“We observed that for forage species, when addressing the issue of seed dormancy, often there is a disagreement between seed germination tests in the laboratory and seedling emergence in the field,” Dr. Bai said. “We wanted to find out the reason for the difference, and we hoped the results would help producers in selecting the optimal seeding rates as well as the best seeding dates.”

Field experiments were conducted near Saskatoon in 2003 and 2004 using two cultivars of western wheatgrass and orchard grass, with four seeding dates ranging from early May to mid-June. Laboratory experiments were conducted to determine the effects of temperature on seed dormancy and the prediction of seedling emergence using the thermal time model.

“It seems that the fluctuating temperature in the field is a critical element that affects seed dormancy and germination,” according to Dr. Bai. “Using a thermal time model approach, we discovered that temperature does indeed affect dormancy, and that fluctuating temperatures can break dormancy in the two species studied under field conditions.”

Dr. Bai explains that a 10 degree Celsius difference between high and low temperatures was most efficient in dormancy breaking, which was close to temperature fluctuations measured in the field at a 1 cm seeding depth.

“The implication is that if you want to test germination for the determination of seeding rate, you need to mimic temperature conditions in the field. Otherwise, if you use constant temperatures for germination tests, you will end up with unnecessarily high seeding rates,” said Dr. Bai.

“Between orchard grass and western wheatgrass, the western wheatgrass has a narrower range of optimal temperature for germination and dormancy breaking.”

As a result of his research, Dr. Bai believes a later seeding date of late May or early June would result in the best seed germination, seedling emergence and stand establishment for western wheatgrass when soil moisture is not limiting.

“Orchard grass, on the other hand, is less sensitive to temperature during dormancy breaking and germination. Thus, seeding between early May and early June would yield good results, and seedling emergence in the field can be predicted with the thermal time model.”

A copy of the Final Report titled “Enhancing Seedling Emergence and Productivity of Forage Grasses Through the Modeling of Seed Dormancy Change” (ADF #20020016) may be obtained by phoning (306) 787-5929 in Regina. The final report is also available on the Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food website at www.agr.gov.sk.ca.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Yuguang Bai
Department of Plant Sciences
University of Saskatchewan
(306) 966-4955

POS Plant Provides Research and development Bioprocessing Solutions

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

There is no other place like this in the world. To most people, POS Pilot Plant at Saskatoon’s Innovation Place is a bit of an enigma, so President and CEO Bob Morgan agreed to provide some enlightenment.

First of all, this is a private, not-for-profit, membership-based corporation. Users pay for the services POS Pilot Plant provides. That, together with government funding, is how the place gets the finances to carry out its activities. It has been in operation since 1977, and now encompasses a 54,000 square foot facility comprised of pilot plant processing areas, laboratories, warehousing and quarantine areas, library, client rooms and administrative areas.

Some key features that will help you fast track your product development plans include a 24 hour a day, five day a week operating schedule with innovative, scientific and technical staff providing pragmatic and creative solutions, as well as grams to tons processing capability.

As Morgan describes the role of the POS Pilot Plant, “let’s imagine that you are a potential client—an entrepreneur exploring an idea for commercialization purposes. Keep in mind that we can work with any biological material except meat. You may have a seed that contains an ingredient that you would like extracted and used in the manufacturing process of a product, whether edible or not. We could take that plant material through the laboratory and seek a way to extract that substance at a profitable level. “If you wished to carry on the project to the next level, we would look at scaling up production of this material at the production plant for you.”

If your source plant material had to be brought in from outside the province, POS Pilot Plant has a logistics department that can look after this need, or any kind of warehousing and shipping needs you may have.

“We would provide you a client room that you could use within our facilities. This is a very particular mode of operation,” explains Morgan. “With us, the client does not carry out his or her own work within our facilities. Our own staff do that, because this is what we do.

“We would develop a process to do the work. We would carry it out and, at the end, we would come up with an opinion as to whether this endeavour is too costly, or too difficult, or we might say yes, it can be done. We would provide you a report that you could take back with you to study in order to make a decision to go ahead with manufacturing on a larger scale, or not.”

POS Pilot Plant could produce a sample for you to test the market before you embark on full production. There is no doubt that having a facility like this reduces your risks, because you don’t have to assume the capital investment required for the initial development work.

“We assume the quality control of our work and you keep the intellectual property, but we don’t get involved in the packaging or those other peripheral components,” says Morgan.

“Other facilities do not provide the analytical contribution we provide. That is another reason why we can say there is no other place like this in the world. As a result, there is about a 50 per cent split between the number of our Canadian and U.S. clients, with roughly five per cent being from other international jurisdictions.”

By the way, the letters “POS” stand for protein, oil and starch. It was the original mission of this pilot plant to focus on these three aspects.

“Our role in the development of canola oil was our first major breakthrough,” notes Morgan.

POS Pilot Plant employs about 75 people, and is helping to grow and create new bio-based businesses in Canada. If you have an idea and/or want to grow your business, it’s worth further exploring with POS.

For more information, contact:

Bob Morgan, P.Ag.
President and CEO
POS Pilot Plant Corp.
(306) 978-2847
http://www.pos.ca/