Abstract

Wheat is one of the major crops in the world serving as an important source of nutrients for human consumption. Fluctuating climate with increasing heat, drought and precipitation, as well as rising concentration of CO2 has been found to significantly affect yield and quality of wheat worldwide. This introductory paper presents latest overview on the effect of fluctuating climate on wheat yield and gluten protein quality with emphasis on bread-making quality in Sweden and worldwide. Wheat gluten protein quality, as the main determinant of bread making quality, has been discussed in relation to the impact from the climate change. The concentration of gluten proteins and the gluten protein types are greatly affected by the varying climate and by the rate and timing of nitrogen fertilizer. Breeding for wheat quality stability is one of the main strategies to tackle climate induced variation in wheat quality and to ensure food security in the world. Therefore, the urgent need is to develop wheat varieties that are adapted to climate fluctuations and could deliver consistent yields and sufficient qualities of the wheat flour for bread and other products over different locations and years. In regard to this, still several challenges exist, and these include a need of efficient and accurate methods to evaluate wheat quality stability, which has been briefly discussed in this paper. Use of latest modern analytical and breeding tools such as, proteomics and a high throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP), as potential ways to improve the genotype selection efficiency in breeding process have been also discussed. In addition, crop performance prediction models based on simulation and gene mapping may improve the selection efficiency and speed up the breeding process to develop new climate resilient wheat varieties. Currently used methods for assessing wheat flour quality and its suitability for bread-making by wheat breeders and the millers are classical rheological tests evaluated by farinograph, alveograph, extensograph and empirical tests such as, sedimentation volume measurement and bread baking. A large number of these quality tests together with great amount of wheat grains (2–5 kg) are required, are the challenging factors requiring new robust and efficient methods for wheat flour and bread quality evaluation. Therefore, a need to develop small scale reliable tests for assessing flour quality for bread-making is of high relevance for wheat breeding and baking industry. Combination of different small scale wheat quality screening tests, modern breeding tools and crop performance prediction models is needed in order to improve selection efficiency in development of climate stable wheat varieties.

Keywords

Bread-making quality; climate variation; G x E; grain protein concentration; wheat gluten; protein polymerization; stability

Published in

Introductory paper at the Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Crop Production Science
2020, number: 2020:3
Publisher: Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

SLU Authors

• Lama, Sbatie

  • Department of Plant Breeding, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Science


Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/108922