The Smart Carbohydrate Centre

我们项目的目的是生产新品种的小麦和大麦，这些小麦和大麦含有与目前英国品种中发现的不同性质的淀粉。淀粉是一种用途广泛的碳水化合物，有许多用途。它占小麦和大麦谷物的80 - 90%，因此是面粉和用于酿造和蒸馏的麦芽的主要成分。从面粉中提取的纯淀粉被用来为许多加工食品提供厚度和质地，并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。这些用途中的每一种都需要不同类型的淀粉。例如，一些食品和工业应用需要淀粉在烹饪时形成粘稠的糊状物，另一些则需要坚固的凝胶。面粉中淀粉的类型会影响面包、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（某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。特定类型的淀粉的性质/它是否形成凝胶或糊状物以及它转化为酒精的速度有多快，例如-取决于组成它的葡萄糖分子（聚合物）链的结构。目前在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、酿酒师和酿酒师对面粉或麦芽中的淀粉类型没有选择。这也意味着纯淀粉的用户必须使用化学品或热和压力来改变聚合物的结构，使其适合他们的用途。显然，开发含有不同类型淀粉的小麦和大麦新品种将有利于面粉、麦芽和纯淀粉的许多用户。它将为面包师提供新的面粉，并可能降低发酵生产酒精的成本。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的"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也将减少纯淀粉在工业使用前的改性需求，并可能开辟淀粉的新用途，例如制造低成本，高质量的可生物降解的“塑料”，以取代由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，培育特殊的淀粉特性。我们已经确定了非商业性的大麦品种，它们具有非常不同的淀粉类型。我们将发现大麦中的哪些基因导致淀粉特性的这种变化，然后使用快速，常规的植物育种方法将这些基因引入适合英国生产的品种中。我们还将把淀粉特性的相同变异引入小麦品种。随着育种计划的进行，我们将监测我们品种中淀粉的特性，并向英国面粉、麦芽和淀粉用户小组提供信息和淀粉样品（包括商业植物育种者、面包师、磨坊主、酿酒师、酿酒师、生物燃料生产商、健康食品研究人员和生物降解包装制造商的代表）。该小组将提供关于哪些类型的淀粉最有价值的反馈，我们将使用这些信息来优先考虑我们的工作。三年后的结果将是接近商业化的大麦和小麦品种，其中含有的淀粉与目前可用的淀粉完全不同，每一种都具有商业潜力。这些将提供给植物育种行业，用于开发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.