The energy distribution and type of the particle with the highest momentum
in quark jets are determined for each of the live quark flavours making onl
y minimal model assumptions. The analysis is based on a large statistics sa
mple of hadronic Z(0) decays collected with the OPAL detector at the LEP e(
+)e(-) collider. These results provide a basis for future studies of light
flavour production at other cerltre-of-mass energies. We use our results to
study the hadronisation mechanism in light flavour jets and compare the da
ta to the QCD models JETSET and HERWIG. Within the JETSET model we also dir
ectly determine the suppression of strange quarks to be
gamma(s) = 0.-122 +/- 0.039(stat.) +/- 0.059(syst.)
by comparing the production of charged and neutral kaons in strange and non
-strange light quark events. Finally we study the features of baryon produc
tion.