Quality determination of wheat: genetic determination, biochemical markers, seed storage proteins - bread and durum wheat germplasm.

Background: Quality is an important determinant in wheat breeding since its genetic background is less affected by the environment and sufficiently influences the commercial value of a cultivar. Thus, if a certain cultivar possesses some specific allele combination at crucial loci, then it appears quite possible to exhibit valuable qualitative traits in terms of end-product quality. This is also true if either durum or bread wheat germplasm is involved.

Results: Biochemical investigation of the wheat germplasm gives important information on the allele constitution of a cultivar, with reference to either the quality or its resistance to stressing factors. The last is crucial since it affects the safe use of this cultivar. The Hellenic wheat germplasm possesses valuable allele combination or chromosome constitution (presence of the 1BL.1RS translocation, which is verified by the presence of a certain allele) with reference to quality. Genotypes having the aforementioned translocation exhibit excellent resistance to various stressing factors, but have a serious handicap, i.e. inferior bread-making quality. This negative effect on quality, although influenced by the genotype, can be overcome if some other alleles are present in a cultivar.

Conclusion: The Hellenic cultivar Acheron is a good example since, despite the presence of the translocation, it also has very good bread-making quality and high yielding ability. It must be also mentioned that most of the Hellenic durum germplasm carries the gene locus Gli-B1 component, similar to γ45, which can be considered as an index of good end-product quality.