Understanding protein impact on soft wheat flour functionality: identification of protein markers for soft wheat breeding

致力于软小麦的预育种，特别是针对烘焙行业的加工质量。该项目由BBSRC-CTP资助，研究将与Mondelez合作进行，学生将在学生期间接受安置。根据生产面粉所需的研磨能量，研磨小麦分为两个商业类别，软的和硬的。软小麦生产的面粉具有低淀粉损伤，这是生产饼干和饼干等烘焙产品的理想选择，但不同软小麦产品的质量是由不同的蛋白质网络特性支撑的。例如，饼干的制造需要形成一种坚韧、有弹性的面筋，而这可能对饼干的制造不利，因为这可能会导致饼干过度收缩，危及S饼干的大小和形状。该项目旨在确定特定的面筋蛋白亚基/簇，负责在软小麦背景下形成可伸展面筋或强/弹性面筋。这将通过使用行业标准面团功能预测测试和高级蛋白质组学对多亲本作图群体的大田种植谷物样本中相关的生化和功能性状进行定量遗传剖析来实现，该群体预计在面筋蛋白编码的基因座上具有高度的变异性。

Working at pre-breeding of soft wheat, specifically targeting its processing quality for the bakery sector. The project is funded via a BBSRC-CTP and the research will be carried out in collaboration with Mondelez, where the student will take up a placement during the course of the studentship. Milling wheat is categorised into two commercial classes, soft and hard, according to the milling energy required to produce the flour. Soft wheat produces flour with low starch damage, which is ideal for the production of bakery products such as biscuits and crackers, but the quality of different soft wheat products is underpinned by different protein networking characteristics. For example, the manufacturing of crackers requires the formation of a strong, elastic gluten while this could be detrimental to the manufacture of cookies, since it may cause excessive shrinking, compromising s their size and shape. This project seeks to identify specific gluten protein subunits/clusters responsible for the formation of either extensible or strong/elastic gluten in a soft wheat background. This will be achieved via quantitative genetic dissection of the relevant biochemical and functional traits in field-grown grain samples of a multi-parent mapping population expected to have a high degree of variability at the loci encoding for gluten proteins using industry standard dough functionality prediction tests and advanced proteomics.