CICS 01. Public driver.

CICS 01

From Field to Flour: Wheat–Pea Intercropping Without Full Separation

Exploring how wheat and peas can be grown, harvested and processed together to create a commercially viable food value chain

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Topic

Public driver

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Country

Denmark

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Responsible 

BLF – Business Lolland-Falster

Objectives

The Danish InterCropValues case explores whether wheat and peas can be intercropped in a way that creates value throughout the entire chain – from field to food.

A key objective is to investigate whether the traditional and potentially costly step of fully separating the two crops after harvest can be reduced or even avoided.

The case therefore connects three questions:

Can wheat and peas support each other agronomically in the field?
Can the two crops be sown and harvested efficiently together?
Can the harvested mixture be used directly for food if a controlled proportion of peas is accepted in the wheat fraction?

The ambition is to identify a cropping and value-chain model that combines efficient land use, reduced dependence on synthetic nitrogen fertiliser, lower post-harvest processing costs and increased use of plant protein in food.

Click here if you want to read the project flyer in Danish

What is this CICS about?

The Danish case explores how wheat and peas can be intercropped, harvested and processed together, reducing the need for costly post-harvest separation.

Rather than aiming for 100% crop purity, the approach investigates whether a controlled proportion of peas (around 10–15%) can be incorporated into wheat-based food products without compromising quality or consumer acceptance.

Bread trials showed that heat-treating pea flour before mixing it into the dough improved texture, structure and flavour, making it a promising ingredient for more sustainable food production.

Learnings

Design the crop around the final product: The optimal intercropping ratio should consider both field performance and the composition required by food producers.
Perfect separation is not always necessary: Allowing a controlled amount of peas in wheat-based products could reduce post-harvest processing costs.
Processing makes a difference: Heat-treating pea flour improves bread quality and expands the possibilities for using intercropped crops.
Consider the whole value chain: Harvesting, drying and storing mixed crops safely remains essential to making this approach commercially viable.

Results

The Danish case has delivered several promising results:

Agronomic potential: Previous field trials achieved a combined Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) of 1.26 for wheat–pea intercropping, indicating more efficient land use than growing the crops separately.
Promising food applications: Bread trials identified 10–15% pea flour as a suitable inclusion range, particularly when the flour was pre-treated with hot water.
Improved nutritional value: Incorporating pea flour increased bread protein content by approximately 10.5%.
Positive sensory results: Bread containing 15% heat-treated pea flour achieved the highest score in blind testing (19.08 out of 25).
Further applications: Tests also showed promising results in cakes, where pea flour improved perceived quality and was subsequently adopted as a standard ingredient by Fælleskøkkenet.

The next step is to validate the approach at field and value-chain scale, particularly regarding harvesting, drying, storage and combined milling.

Contact: Claus Madelung

Different shares of pea flour (Harlo Meyer)

Various shares of pea flour (FællesKøkkenet)

Updates from
the CICS 01:

A challenging year in the field at Brandstrup on the island of Lolland (Denmark)

Mar 12, 2024

Sustainability in agriculture is high on the EU agenda, and a field of peas and lentils on the Danish Island of Lolland plays an important role in this. Despite a very challenging year, the first peas and lentils have been harvested and now the results will be...

Challenging the agri-food value chains in Denmark through intercropping

Sep 7, 2023

Denmark is a highly and intensively cultivated country advancing from a high degree of specialisation. Approximately 50% of the agricultural area is grown with cereals for maturity, almost 70 % of this is used for fodder corresponding to €23 billion in exports,...