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Soft Wheat Quality Research Unit Research in Progress
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The original, 1937 Congressional mandate to the SWQL was to improve the quality and consistency of eastern US soft wheat. Today we continue to be challenged to improve wheat quality, and clearly the major accomplishment of the project over its entire life is precisely that. The quality of eastern US soft wheat is documented to have improved and has become more consistent across cultivars and across states or other growing regions. A major component of that wheat improvement has been the gradual development of various biochemical, rheological, milling and baking micro tests which enable the Laboratory to process many times more samples today than a few decades ago. Growers have been given the knowledge that lowered test
weight does not always mean that their wheat is inferior in quality.
That can empower them at the point of sale to ascertain the relative amounts
of puffed and shriveled kernels in their lot. Growers can then better
understand why their wheat lots may be docked for test weight. Growers
can attempt better crop management during production to avoid shriveling,
producing added value for them and for the U.S. wheat crop in general.
Soft wheat flour quality will be improved every time shriveled wheat is
not included in the marketing chain. Millers, bakers, and wheat and
flour importers are better served by flour made from non-shriveled wheat,
as it produces softer, lighter, more tender soft wheat products...cookies,
cakes, pretzels, pie crusts, donuts, etc. Breeders now know that
soft wheat genetics appears to be a determining factor of starch granule
size distribution. In addition to desired starch component properties,
granule size also can be selected as a wheat breeding goal.
Present and Future Research The next steps for the genetic marker research are to associate markers and wheat genes with biochemcial, milling and baking traits in the various recombinant inbred lines and doubled haploid lines developed by soft wheat The genetic map of the populations will be elaborated by various scientists, while milling, baking, and numerous biochemical and rheological analyses will be completed at the SWQL and elsewhere by cooperators in the U.S. and abroad. Protein quality assessments of three or four state wheat breeding programs will be completed so that breeders can save dual-purpose wheats (good for both cookies and crackers) in both early- and advanced-generations. During the next year various milling qualities of soft wheat cultivars, most of which are strongly genetically controlled and environmentally influenced, will be investigated. The purpose will be to identify when and how in the milling process those differences become manifest and to determine their biochemical or biophysical causes. Some Technologies Transferred by SWQL Technologies which have been transferred from the SWQL throughout the life of this project are numerous. Scores of official testing procedures are documented in the Official Methods of the American Association of Cereal Chemists, including small-, intermediate-, and large-scale, experimental milling methods, various analytical baking methods, and numerous predictive and biochemical screening test procedures. Many scores of other research projects completed in collaboration with wheat breeders, wheat geneticists, agronomists, plant pathologists and millers and bakers document the important influences on wheat quality from agronomic, genetic, plant pathological, and farming practices. 1. Annual update on the Historical quality data (nearly 8,000 entries and 56,000 pieces of information) on more than 400 soft wheat cultivars released during the past 150 years. This report is given to numerous millers, bakers, growers, wheat breeders and other scientists each year . 2. Annual Soft Wheat Quality Laboratory Research Review Conference held in the spring of every year for past 46 years. This National meeting has been a one to two day conference attended by 75-100 individuals yearly from most segments of the wheat industry, including growers, agronomists, breeders, geneticists, millers, bakers, other food processors, elevator operators, plant pathologists and cereal scientists and technicians. Significant Research Accomplishments 1) Completion of protein quality studies which indicate that superior protein mixing strength excellent for manufacturing yeast- and chemically leavened crackers) exists in a sizable proportion of Eastern soft red wheat cultivars and does not reduce the milling or cookie baking potential of those wheat cultivars. 2. Grain for Phase II of the highly collaborative, genetic mapping and marker project, involving the Canadian population (AC Reed x Grandlin , by Greg Penner, Ag Canada, with 106 doubled haploid lines, more if needed) was grown in Ohio, Minnesota, Canada, and New York and has been received for chemical, milling and baking evaluation. 3. Starch granules isolated from soft wheat cultivars were smaller when isolated from wheats having harder kernel texture, partially explaining why cultivars differ in texture. Partial waxy soft wheat had higher hot pasting viscosity and softer starch gel texture. Generally, more flour yield was produced from wheats that had higher amylopectin content and smaller granule size. 4. Algorithms were developed that improved the agreement between milling results from a small, single pass mill and a much larger multi-pass mill. The small mill was made to produce accurate milling results from as little as ten grams of untempered wheat, saving valuable operator time and greatly increasing the efficiency of the micro-testing evaluation program. 5. Chlorine treatment of cake flour was replaced
by substituting an amount of starch for untreated flour. The amount
was determined by the area under the hot pasting viscosity curve that was
equivalent to that produced by chlorine treated flour.
Measurable Kernel Characteristics and Wheat Quality
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