C. W. Wrigley, Food Science Australia and Wheat CRC, North Ryde (Sydney), NSW 1670, Australia; F. Békés and C. R. Cavanagh, CSIRO Plant Industry, Canberra, ACT 2600, Australia; W. Bushuk, Food Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada
Gliadin and Glutenin: The Unique Balance of Wheat Quality
Pages 453-466
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1094/9781891127519.bm
ISBN: 978-1-891127-51-9
Abstract
Many years of research on the gluten proteins of wheat have provided a large number of research publications, many of them including information about the composition of gliadins and glutenin subunits in a wide range of wheat genotypes. This information is potentially valuable for many of the purposes described in this book, e.g., pursuit of population genetics, to determine how readily a specific combination of varieties could be distinguished on the basis of analyzing specific aspects of gluten composition, and to determine the value of specific genotypes as parent lines to achieve targeted genetic potential for dough quality.
However, these lists of gluten composition are spread throughout the literature and in private listings. Thus, it may is be difficult to find the information about specific genotypes. Furthermore, some of the information is not in the readily accessible literature, such as being part of instruction manuals on variety identification for regional sets of varieties (e.g., Wrigley and McCausland 1975, Ng et al 1988).
It has thus been worthwhile to provide a compilation of gluten composition for the many genotypes (mainly named cultivars) for which gliadins and glutenin subunits are available. This compilation proved to be too large to include within the covers of this book, so it is made available on the website of Cereals & Grains Association (https://www.cerealsgrains.org) in the section called the Grain Bin. The purpose of this Appendix is to draw attention to the existence of the information on the website, and to provide background to this resource. It should be noted that this is not the only website with information regarding wheat storage protein alleles. The following two websites contain similar or complementary information to the current website: the graingenes website compiled by Bob Graybosch (http://wheat.pw.usda.gov/ggpages/gopher/Quality/Molecular/HMW/") and the Wheat Pedigree and Identified Alleles of the Genes On Line website (http://genbank.vurv.cz/wheat/pedigree/).
Chapters 1 to 6 provide information about the chemistry, genetics and nomenclature for the three classes of proteins covered in the website list, namely, the gliadins and the subunits of glutenin, both the high-and low-molecular-weight groups (HMW-and LMW-subunits, respectively).
The information is provided in the form of alleles (shown as “ a “, “ b “, … etc.) appropriate to the locus (e.g., Gli-1, Glu-3) for each genome (A, B or D). In the case of the gliadins, there are two loci, for both Group 1 and Group 6 chromosomes. For the HMW subunits of glutenin, nomenclature is agreed for the subunits as well as for the alleles, so both forms are provided (see Chapter 5).
