WHEAT GERM OIL.

Shannon News, 8 October 1929, Page 4

WHEAT GERM OIL.

EXTRACTED ON A LARGE SCALE. Loking, .smelling and tasting like ordmaiy lubricating oil, three gallons of oil extracted from wheat are etored at the Wheat Eeseareh Institute's laboratory in Montreal Street,- Christchurch. It is intended that over, twenty gallons snail be extracted. The oil will be used byHhe Veterindry Division of the Department of Agriculture in it !s anti-sterility experiments on farm animals, which will be commenced in about six weeks' time. The oil is strong in certain vitamins that ordinary pasture grasses may lack.

The three gallons of oil have been extracted from 500 pounds of wheat germ, which itself constitutes only about one per cent, of each grain of wheat. The germ is extracted in-the process of milling, raid in the ordinary course is fed to animals as offal. Much plant has been necessary for the extractionof the oil, and though such extractions have been made in other countries it is believed that the .work in Ghristeurcli is on a scale never before - attempted ni the" world The extraction is being carried out under the guidance of Mr H. E. West, the Institute's chemist. It is understood that the anti-steril-ity experiments on farm animals will be among the first of their kind*in the world. Many experiments with wheat oil have been carried outi in the United States, but experts have in the main confined their experiments to rats and mice.