Wheat Starch Quality Improvement Group

Research Group headed by Dr C.F. Jenner

The group is developing new cultivars of bread wheat and durum wheat with novel starch properties that improve quality characteristics for conventional uses, and expand the range of cultivars for new food products and as a source of raw material for industrial applications. Accessions of three Triticum species ( T. aestivum, T. durum and T. tauschii) from Australian and overseas sources are screened to identify lines with unusual starch properties, or starch granule protein variants. Desirable traits are introgressed into elite cultivars producing breeders’ lines with novel starch properties.

Objectives

• Improved cultivars of wheats for the white salted noodle market;
• Development of wheats with waxy starch for use as additives to improve dough properties and to substitute for the addition of fat, and as high energy animal food;
• Development of bread wheats with starch of high amylose content for the emerging market in high soluble fibre breads and other products, and
• Developing durum wheats with novel starch properties for quality evaluation by the pasta industry.

The South Australian Grains Industry Trust has provided some funding. Currently, the development if high amylose bread wheats is being funded by a partnership between Adelaide Research and Innovation, the Grains Industry Research and Development Corporation and a food manufacturing company. An alliance with a health food company and an international consortium of plant breeders is being negotiated for supporting the development of other types of durum and bread wheats with novel starch properties.

Research Staff

Dr Colin Jenner leads the group. He joined the academic staff of the University of Adelaide in 1968 and retired as Associate Professor in Plant Science at the end of 1996. Presently he has the status of Visiting Research Fellow. Before retirement his main research interest focused on physiological and environmental factors involved in controlling the synthesis of starch in the endosperm of the developing wheat grain.

Dr Rajinder Sharma is working in this group as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow. She served the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India as an Assistant Professor (1979-1987) and an Associate Professor (1988-1995) and worked on hormonal regulation and physiology of reproductive development in cereals and pulses. Current interests include understanding the relationships between starch composition of cereals and their suitability for particular end uses.

Collaborators

Dr M.J. Sissons (NSW Agriculture, Tamworth Centre for Crop Improvement, Tamworth, Australia) collaborates on pasta quality evaluation of null-4A waxy durum cultivars and other novel types of durum wheats.