UC Davis Earns Grant to Increase Dietary Fiber in Wheat

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Diets lacking fiber are linked to health concerns such as colon cancer and heart disease, but Americans only consume 30 percent of the recommended daily amount. UC Davis was rewarded a grant of $500,000 from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research to increase dietary fiber content in wheat products.

Rockey… “Especially in this country, wheat and wheat flour is a significant component of our diet. And so anything we can do to increase the health attributes of that flour is going to be fantastic.”

That’s Foundation for Food & Ag Research Executive Director Sally Rockey. She sees breeding crops for nutritional content as the next frontier in agricultural advancement.

Rockey… “Well, I think this is the real focus for the future of agricultural breeding programs is really that idea that we can breed for nutritional content. That is really been not as much of a focus in the past and it's becoming increasingly important as we look for high value crops that provide the nutrition that we need. So this is a really exciting area. It's also exciting because we can use new technologies such as gene editing to help us get there much quicker.”

Bay State Milling, California Wheat Commission and Limagrain Cereal Seeds provided matching funds for the project.