The climate is getting warmer, becoming more unpredictable and extreme which are negatively affecting crop yield and decreasing food security worldwide. The quality of the grains such as, wheat is also adversely affected and as a result farmers and food processing industries are facing losses. In Sweden huge seasonal weather fluctuations, as a rainy and cold summer in 2017 and an extremely dry and hot growing season in 2018, greatly affected the wheat quality, which in turn negatively affected the production of the local wheat food products. For wheat processing industry this climate fluctuation caused a large import of bread quality wheat from other countries. In order to decrease the import of bread wheat and secure local food products, a project within the Plant Breeding Competence Center at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Alnarp, Sweden has been initiated. It is a collaboration between a plant breeding company, the milling industry and researchers. The aim of this project is to develop stable wheat varieties with sufficient yield and good bread-making quality characteristics in extreme weather conditions.

Gluten proteins are one of the most important components determining bread-making quality in wheat. Variation in gluten protein composition is impacted by genotype, growing environment conditions and by interactions of these factors, determining end-use quality of wheat products. In many studies it has been showed that wheat gluten protein polymerization is negatively affected by severe environmental factors e.g. heat, water availability and nutrient management. Although, none of these studies monitored in details gluten protein characteristics of Swedish wheat varieties grown under the last few years and in severe climatic conditions.

Within this project we will present an extensive study on a collection of wheat genotypes/breeding lines grown during 2017-2020 years in fluctuating climatic environment and under diverse agronomic onditions in Sweden. We will study gluten protein characteristics such as polymerization and structure in grain, flour and dough, and will explore the impact of genetics and various environmental and agronomic factors on bread wheat quality parameters. Protein characterization using HPLC methods and dough viscoelastic properties using mixing methods will be performed. New knowledge obtained on factors determining wheat quality stability will be of a high value to use inbreeding programs aiming to breed quality stable wheat.