abstract
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Wheat is one of the most important cereals in the world and major source of human food and protein. Wheat quality is affected by climatic fluctuations and combined heat and drought, as a consequence of climate change and global warming. In order to ensure food security in a changing climate maintaining of the stable quality of wheat is greatly needed. Tools assisting in breeding that include extensive evaluation and efficient selection of wheat quality stability in the whole chain such as, “flour-dough-bread” is needed for developing of stable wheat varieties. Our study aims to evaluate quality stability of spring wheat genotypes grown in cool-rainy season in 2017 and hot-dry season in 2018 in southern Sweden. We used size exclusion high-performance liquid chromatography (SE-HPLC), mixograph and bread baking tests to evaluate the varying climate impact on the gluten properties and bread quality. In this study, five spring wheat genotypes grown in 2017 and 2018 were compared for the gluten protein characteristics during dough mixing and baking of bread. In cool-rainy season, all five genotypes showed higher total amounts of extractable proteins (TOTE), referred as protein content in the flour compared to hot-dry growing environment In hot-dry season, nearly all the genotypes (except one) showed similar amounts of the unextractable polymeric proteins (%UPP) in the flour in both seasons and slightly higher amounts of the large unextractable monomeric proteins (%LUMP) in the flour in hot-dry season compared to the cold-rainy season. Four genotypes showed a small variation (around 2%) in %UPP between the seasons in the flour, indicating these genotypes’ stability in gluten strength. The mixograph results indicated, that higher both the mixing time and water absorption were observed for all the genotypes in the cool-rainy season, indicating negative heat-drought effect on the mixing properties. The average baking volume of bread in cool-rainy and hot-dry seasons was varying and showed large increase and decrease, as well as small variation in the studied wheat material. The most stable genotypes (35 and 59) in terms of least climate impact on the bread volume showed only very stable %UPP, but varied in protein content (TOTE), %LUMP and the mixing parameters. From this study we conclude that stability in %UPP is between the most important characters that can be promising to use in breeding for climate stability.