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Hard White Versus Hard Red Wheats: Taste Tests and Milling and Baking Properties

¹Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717. ²Corresponding author. Phone: (406) 994-7877. E-mail: mgiroux@montana.edu

Molecular markers for the red grain color (R) loci controlling seed color and the polyphenol oxidase (Ppo-A1) locus controlling polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity in seed have recently been developed. These markers provided the opportunity to convert the hard red spring wheat cultivars Choteau and Hank to white-seeded versions with high and low PPO levels, respectively. These sets of near-isogenic lines provided material to test the effects of seed color and PPO activity on a range of end-use quality traits. We tested recurrent parents Choteau and Hank, along with near-isogenic derivatives with white seed, in two replicated trials in Bozeman, Montana, for end-use quality parameters. The white-seeded lines consisted of both high- and low-PPO near-isogenic lines. The primary impact of white seed was the production of whole wheat bread with a perceived sweeter taste relative to the red-seeded lines. Noodle color was not consistently impacted by the level of PPO variation despite relatively large reductions in PPO level. The alleles for white seed color did not appear to impact agronomic traits. These results suggested that hard white low-PPO hard spring wheat would be advantageous in terms of conferring brighter color to Asian noodles and a sweeter taste to whole wheat bread.