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Title: ADAPTATION OF AACC METHOD 56-11, SOLVENT RETENTION CAPACITY, FOR USE IN WHEAT BREEDING PROGRAMS

Author
item Bettge, Arthur
item Morris, Craig
item KIDWELL, K - WASHINGTON STATE UNIV
item DEMACON, V - WASHINGTON STATE UNIV

Submitted to: Cereal Chemistry
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/18/2002
Publication Date: 9/1/2002
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Identifying the influence of classes of compounds, and their interactions, on the end-use (milling and baking) quality of wheat has been a goal of cereal chemists for years. The solvent retention capacity test (SRC) is one of the techniques that has been recently developed to help in rapidly estimating a wheat's potential for end-use quality. Essentially, the technique uses four to six solvents to completely saturate flour, after which the sample in centrifuged and the amount of solvent remaining in the flour pellet is measured. This technique uses five grams for flour per test, requiring a total of about 20 - 30 g of flour for a complete SRC profile. This is more material than is available in early generations of wheat breeding programs. This research examined reducing the size of each SRC sample from five grams to 0.2 grams per test and changed the material from flour to ground wheat meal. This represents a considerable savings in ntime and material, allowing the SRC test to be run in very early generations. As might be expected, some resolution in predicting end-use functionality was lost, especially when moving from flour to wheat meal. But for a breeding program, which aims to remove unsuitable material from the program as early as possible, the method provides sufficient information and resolution to be able to remove a large proportion of this unsuitable material. The best and worst samples for any SRC test can be easily separated. Between the extreme values, there is some mixing in the ordered results. Overall, the small-scale SRC test is very well suited to early generation breeding programs.

Technical Abstract: The Solvent Retention Capacity (SRC) profile (AACC method 56-11) is useful in studying flour components contributing to end-use functionality. The method uses four solvents and five grams of flour. Due to the amount of grain needed to produce the required 20 g flour for the SRC test alone, this method is not well-suited to evaluating potential end-use quality in the early generations of wheat breeding programs. The method was modified to use 0.2 g ground wheat instead of five grams of flour per SRC test. Results indicated that the modified method was suitable for advancing or dropping wheat lines from a breeding program; a sort of breeding triage. The small-scale wheat SRC results had correlations of r = 0.86 for lactic acid, 0.85 for sodium carbonate, 0.78 for sucrose, 0.74 for sodium bicarbonate (Alkaline Water Retention Capacity, AWRC) and 0.69 for water when compared to five gram flour SRC values. Overall, the varieties with SRC values at the extremes followed the same order between small- and large-scale SRC. There was some variation in ranked order of varieties that were not at the extremes. However, the results indicated that selection decisions for either advancing promising germplasm or dropping germplasm lacking potential for good end-use quality is possible and the small-scale SRC technique can be used for early generation wheat breeding work.