The Canadian International Grains Institute (CIGI) plans to put over $900,000 in new funds to work with equipment for a testing, training and demonstration centre for crop and new food development at its Winnipeg facility.
Federal and provincial politicians on Friday announced $499,000 through the Canada-Manitoba Economics Partnership Agreement and $103,700 through the Manitoba agriculture (MAFRI) department’s Food Development Centre. The Canadian Wheat Board, which along with the federal government funds CIGI operations, noted its contribution of another $320,000 in a separate release Friday.
The EPA funding will go toward equipment including a near infrared analyzer, for chemical analysis of foods; a lab-scale cold extruder, used to extract ingredients from grain for products such as pasta or confectionary doughs, but in this case to gather technical data on the ingredients; a lab-scale cooking extruder (used in processing to expand and extract low-density materials to make puffy snack foods or breakfast cereals, or gelatinized products such as gum), also to gather technical data; and a c-cell image analysis system, to gauge the internal structure of bread products.
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The MAFRI funding will go toward equipment for CIGI’s Advance Asian Product Testing lab, another segment of this CIGI project.
Jim Rondeau, the province’s minister for competitiveness, said the new CIGI centre would help evaluate new technologies, information and equipment to boost profitability for farmers through international markets.
In a press release issued by Western Economic Diversification Canada, the partners said international standards and processing requirements for grain and value-added food processing have been evolving, and the new equipment will ensure CIGI meets or exceeds those standards.
CIGI’s mandate is to promote Canada’s field crops and their products through technical support and education for export customers worldwide.
The CWB noted that its pledge for this project will come from its special account, which is funded from unclaimed cheques to producers, along with interest earnings that are not part of its pool accounts.
