Dry Peas

Yellow and green peas are the volume types. Yellow peas dominate splitting and fractionation; green peas serve markets where the colour is visible in the finished food and are correspondingly exposed to a defect that yellow peas escape — bleaching. Green peas exposed to sun and weather in the field lose colour, and a bleached green pea is downgraded on appearance while remaining perfectly sound. Specialty types such as marrowfat and maple peas serve their own markets, notably snack and processing uses.

Pea fractionation separates the seed into protein, starch, and fibre streams, with pea protein isolates and concentrates supplying plant-based foods, beverages, and sports nutrition. This buyer’s specification looks nothing like a food packer’s: it values protein content and the functional properties of the protein, and is largely indifferent to the appearance attributes that dominate traditional grading.

The starch and fibre streams from fractionation are not waste — they are sold into food and feed uses, which makes fractionation a genuine multi-output process. AgricultureID does not currently publish pea protein, pea starch, or split pea entries, so these pathways are described here rather than linked.

• Food — split peas, whole peas, and traditional culinary use
• Food ingredient — pea protein isolates and concentrates, plus starch and fibre
• Feed — a protein and energy source in pig, poultry, and ruminant diets
• Snack — roasted and coated peas, and specialty types for processing
• Seed — retained or certified for planting

Dry peas are used in animal feed to a greater degree than most food pulses, and the outlet is genuine rather than a home for rejects — though off-grade and bleached lots do flow there. Peas sit between a cereal and a protein meal in feed terms, contributing both starch and protein, which makes them useful in diets where a single ingredient can do two jobs. Inclusion is a formulator’s decision made against species and diet, not a general property of the commodity.

Dry peas are large, round, and free-flowing, and they split readily — the cotyledons separate under mechanical stress, especially when the seed is dry and brittle. Splits are a graded defect for food lots and irrelevant for fractionation, so the same handling regime is worth different amounts depending on the destination. Storage is kept cool and dry with insect monitoring; peas held moist heat and mould like any pulse.