The Smart Carbohydrate Centre

我们项目的目标是生产新的小麦和大麦品种，这些品种含有与目前英国品种不同的淀粉。淀粉是一种用途非常广泛的碳水化合物，有多种用途。它占小麦和大麦谷物的80%-90%，因此是酿造和蒸馏所用的面粉和麦芽的主要成分。从面粉中提取的纯淀粉被用来赋予许多加工食品的厚度和质地，并被转化为葡萄糖用作甜味剂。它还用于制造纸张、纺织品、药丸、化妆品、胶水和包装材料。每种用途都需要一种不同类型的淀粉。例如，一些食品和工业应用需要一种在烹调时形成稠糊的淀粉，而另一些则需要牢固的凝胶。面粉中的淀粉类型会影响面包、意大利面和其他烘焙食品的质地和保质期。麦芽中的淀粉类型影响啤酒和威士忌生产过程中的发酵成本(有些类型的淀粉比其他类型的淀粉更容易转化为酒精)，以及啤酒的质量。例如，一种特定类型的淀粉的性质/它是形成凝胶还是糊状，以及它转化为酒精的速度--取决于组成它的葡萄糖分子(聚合物)链的结构。目前英国种植的小麦和大麦淀粉中的聚合物结构都非常相似。这意味着面包师、酿酒师和蒸馏器对他们的面粉或麦芽中的淀粉类型没有选择。这也意味着纯淀粉的使用者必须使用化学品或加热和压力来修改聚合物的结构，使其适合他们的目的。显然，含有不同类型淀粉的小麦和大麦新品种的开发将有利于许多面粉、麦芽和纯淀粉的用户。它将为面包师提供新的面粉，并可能降低生产酒精的发酵成本。这将有助于啤酒和威士忌的生产，也可能对从小麦和大麦中生产乙醇作为汽车绿色燃料的成本效益至关重要。生产不同类型淀粉的小麦和大麦品种还将减少在工业使用之前对纯淀粉进行改性的需要，并可能为淀粉开辟新的用途，例如在制造低成本、高质量的可生物降解‘塑料’方面，以取代石油和煤炭制成的塑料。我们建议开发新的小麦和大麦品种，培育出具有特殊淀粉特性的品种。我们已经确定了非商业大麦品种，它们的淀粉类型非常不同。我们将发现大麦中哪些基因对淀粉特性的这种变化负责，然后使用快速、传统的植物育种方法将这些基因引入适合英国生产的品种。我们还将在小麦品种中引入相同的淀粉特性变异。随着育种计划的进行，我们将监测我们品种的淀粉特性，并向面粉、麦芽和淀粉的英国用户小组(包括商业植物育种者、面包师、磨坊、酿酒商、蒸馏器、生物燃料生产商、健康食品研究人员和可生物降解包装制造商的代表)提供信息和淀粉样本。专家小组将就哪些类型的淀粉最有价值提供反馈，我们将利用这些信息来确定我们工作的优先顺序。三年后，结果将是近乎商业化的大麦和小麦品种，含有与现有产品截然不同的淀粉，每种产品都具有商业潜力。这些将被提供给植物育种行业，用于开发成英国市场的成品品种。

The aim of our project is to produce new varieties of wheat and barley that contain starches with different properties from those found in current UK varieties. Starch is a very versatile carbohydrate, with many uses. It makes up 80-90% of wheat and barley grains, and is thus the main component of flour and of malts used in brewing and distilling. Pure starch, extracted from flour, is used to give thickness and texture to many processed food products, and is converted to glucose for use as a sweetener. It is also used in the manufacture of paper, textiles, pills, cosmetics, glues and packaging material. Each of these uses requires a different type of starch. For example, some food and industrial applications require a starch that forms a thick paste when cooked, others require a firm gel. The type of starch in flour can influence both the texture and the shelf life of bread, pasta and other baked goods. The type of starch in malts influences the cost of fermentation during beer and whisky production (some types of starch are much more easily converted to alcohol than others), and the quality of beer. The properties of a particular type of starch / whether it forms a gel or a paste and how quickly it is converted to alcohol, for example - depend on the structure of the chains of glucose molecules (polymers) of which it is composed. The structures of the polymers in starch from wheat and barley grown in the UK at present are all very similar. This means that bakers, brewers and distillers have no choice about the type of starch in their flour or malt. It also means that users of pure starch have to modify the structure of the polymers using chemicals or heat and pressure to make it suitable for their purposes. It is clear that the development of new varieties of wheat and barley, containing different types of starch, would be advantageous to many users of flour, malt and pure starch. It would provide new flours for bakers, and would potentially reduce the cost of fermentation to produce alcohol. This would be useful in beer and whisky production, and could also be critical in the cost-effectiveness of producing ethanol from wheat and barley as a 'green' fuel for cars. Wheat and barley varieties producing different types of starch would also reduce the need for modification of pure starch prior to its industrial use, and might open up new uses for starch / for example in the manufacture of low-cost, high-quality biodegradable 'plastics' to replace plastics made from oil and coal. We propose to develop new varieties of wheat and barley, bred for particular starch properties. We have already identified non-commercial varieties of barley that have very different types of starch. We will discover which genes in barley are responsible for this variation in starch properties, then use fast, conventional plant breeding methods to introduce these genes into varieties suitable for production in the UK. We will also introduce the same variation for starch properties into wheat varieties. We will monitor the properties of starch in our varieties as the breeding programme proceeds, and provide information and starch samples to a panel of UK users of flour, malt and starch (including representatives of commercial plant breeders, bakers, millers, brewers, distillers, producers of biofuels, researchers on healthy foods and manufacturers of biodegradable packaging). The panel will provide feedback on which types of starch are most valuable, and we will use this information to prioritise our work. The outcome, in three years time, will be near-commercial varieties of barley and wheat containing starches radically different from those presently available, each of which has commercial potential. These will be made available to the plant breeding industry for development into finished varieties for the UK market.