Project Number: 3607-43440-005-00
Project Type: Appropriated

Start Date: Feb 02, 2005
End Date: Nov 30, 2009

Objective:
Elucidate important soft wheat milling and end use qualities for domestic and export markets and insure new wheats have those qualities. Investigate flour quality parameters for major end uses. Evaluate wheat breeder test lines and develop methods to improve the test milling and baking of these lines. Develop new methods to predict milling qualities from physical and chemical kernel characteristics and define the biophysical and biochemical basis of wheat milling. Develop a method to produce chemically leavened crackers in the laboratory to allow testing of soft wheat breeding lines and cultivars for possible end-use application in cracker production. Collaboratively facilitate genetic mapping of wheat quality traits; cooperate on the development and release superior-quality wheat cultivars and germ plasm for the Eastern United States.

Approach:
After investigating sources of milling quality variations, new analytical testing techniques will be discovered and applied that predict important milling qualities of wheat samples. Application of those tests will eliminate the requirements to mill some samples, especially at the early generation quality screening stage. Chemically leavened crackers will be formulated and produced on the laboratory bench-top and that their characteristics will be related to the commercial product characteristics that are sensitive to important differences in flour quality, such as gluten strength. The application of the method will allow identification of flour qualities and certain end-use that are not now directly available. Expected outcomes will include the necessity to include another baking evaluation in our test line development evaluation program or a screening test that predicts important aspects of chemically leavened cracker quality. Better genetic mapping of wheat quality traits will increase the efficiency of breeders selection of high quality soft wheat cultivars by making opportunities for new selection strategies for breeders and quality evaluators that integrate molecular-genetic assays with conventional quality assays. Our mission includes cooperatively developing and encouraging the release of superior quality soft wheat cultivars and germ plasm for the Eastern United States by evaluating the quality of test lines will elevate the end-use quality of the market class. Using predictive tests, we must forecast end-use qualaity in thousands of wheat breeding lines annually and assist breeders in making subsequent selections for moderately-to-highly heritable and end-use quality traits. The expected outcome will be the release of new high quality soft wheat cultivars, some of which will possess newly identified value added characteristics.