Wheat-rye chromosomal translocation and waxy wheat: Agronomic performance and end-use quality

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the most important cereal crops of the world because of high yield potential, vast acreage of production and worldwide consumption. Extensive works on wheat breeding have been undertaken during the last century. Most research has concentrated on increasing grain yield and disease and insect resistance. During the last couple of decades, new studies on end-use quality have emerged in hard and soft wheat breeding programs. This new aspect of wheat breeding has increased nutritional value of wheat and led to the development of wheat cultivars for specific end-use purposes. Therefore, consideration of end-use quality is a new aspect of wheat breeding. Rye (Secale) was the first alien source adapted in wheat breeding programs. Various wheat-rye translocation lines have been developed to increase useful genetic variation of the wheat genome and to reduce the amount of unwanted alien chromatin and its own chromatin. Wheat-rye translocations have involved the short arm (S) of 1R which carries disease resistance genes and favorable gene combinations for high grain yield. In spite of numerous agronomic advantages on wheat-rye translocations, IRS translocation lines are considered as deleterious for bread baking quality. Lower quality for bread making can be an advantage for making cookies and noodles, because favorable quality parameters are opposite between soft wheat and hard wheat. The first study was conducted to understand the influence of the 1DL.1RS translocation on agronomic performance and soft red winter wheat quality using recombinant inbred lines. To produce wheat for specific end-use purpose, waxy wheat has been developed. The physicochemical properties of waxy wheat have not been defined clearly, although it has been reported that the end-use quality of waxy wheat may not be suitable for present applications such as bread baking, pasta and noodle making. The second study was conducted to better understand the influence of wx genes on physicochemical properties of starch and end-use quality of soft red wheat. End-use quality of flour and physicochemical properties of starch were analyzed. X-ray diffractograms, Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Rapid Viscoanalyser (RVA) were applied to study the physicochemical properties of waxy starch. The crystalline ratio of starch, thermal transition temperatures of starch, and viscosity of starch detected patterns that differed between waxy starch and normal starch.