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Publisher Summary Industrialization and centralization of the milling industry have resulted in the milling of wheat, originating over a wide geographic area and creating need for flour markets national and international scope. To maintain a consumer-acceptable level of flour standardization, it has become necessary to evaluate not only the flour, but the wheat shipments prior to milling. The chapter describes the development of the microquality tests applicable to bread, pastry, and durum flour evaluation, for which varietal differences have been demonstrated and which have been investigated and used by plant breeders as selection tools. These tests are based on loaf volume, recording dough mixers, wheat meal fermentation time, expansion, sedimentation, pearling index, viscosity, cookie baking, color, and alkaline water retention capacity. Breeding methods are dictated by the sample size needed for microquality tests. The prospects of hybrid wheat production will tremendously stimulate wheat research in all areas. Selection of the plant-breeding method adopted for quality improvement of wheat varieties or hybrid stocks will have to employ an effective selection unit based upon knowledge of the genetic divergence of the parents, correlation of associated characters, and environmental influence. Protein content serves as a good sample of the difficulties encountered in breeding for the desired level of a quality factor exhibiting limited genetic variation, and being extremely sensitive to environmental influences. |
