I've been trawling the net for an answer on how to select an option in a model dropdown and i've used this combination which has helped me out with Angular material.
element(by.model("ModelName")).click().element(By.xpath('xpathlocation')).click();
it appears that when throwing the code all in one line it could find the element in the dropdown.
Took a lot of time for this solution I hope that this helps someone out.