NCI Welcomes U.S. Wheat Associates

US Wheat Associates group and guests

Last week, U.S. Wheat Associates from around the globe came to NCI to take part in their Core Competencies Team Training. The U.S. Wheat foreign staff spent 2 days at NCI listening to presentations from their peers and industry professionals, as well as participating in demonstrations and tours of NCI’s labs. The main focus of their training was to learn more about solvent retention capacity (SRC), and explore different methods used to obtain results.

Group photo from the reception and dinner

The first day, the staff was welcomed to NCI and learned more about what we do from presentations by Mark Jirik - Director, David Boehm - Technical Manager, and Brian Sorenson - Program Manager. The group spent the rest of the morning hearing presentations about SRC. After lunch, the group was able to see first hand what they just learned about. Some staff members got to try the “shake” method of SRC and shook tubes of flour samples mixed with solvent manually. The whole group then compared it to the machine that shook samples to see the difference in results. They concluded how inconsistent it was to shake the samples by hand as opposed to having the machine do it. The group finished the afternoon with discussing the results they learned from the demonstration. A reception and dinner was held at the Sanctuary Events Center in downtown Fargo later that night. NCI staff, guests, and U.S. Wheat Associates attended for appetizers, dinner, and even dancing!

The next day, the group continued their SRC discussion in the morning. After lunch, they took a tour of the NCI labs to learn more about our capabilities and what we do. The afternoon concluded with a few more presentations and then the group departed from NCI to continue their leg of the training. They had previously been in Portland, OR and now continue their way to Kansas. NCI enjoyed hosting U.S. Wheat Associates and we look forward to their return in the future!