Wheat Quality

Wheat, one of the most crucial crops in the world, has been utilized in the production of a wide range of traditional and modern processed foods throughout history. Wheat breeders all over the world have primarily focused on increasing the grain yield to feed people in the last century. Grain quality was the secondary goal in wheat breeding programs during that period. However, wheat grain quality has recently become important due to increased interest in the quality of the end-product. The definition of wheat quality varies according to the numerous stakeholders in the wheat value chain. It is, for instance, a wheat with a high yield, resistant to diseases, pests, and stress conditions for the farmer. It is a wheat with high protein/gluten content and strong gluten quality for flour, bread, and pasta industrialists. It refers to wheat that will produce a healthy end-product with suitable quality and sensory and textural properties from the customer’s point of view. Among them, end-product quality, the ability of a wheat cultivar to produce a specific product based on the consumer’s preferences, is likely the most important. All over the world, wheat is used to manufacture hundreds of different products, each having its own grain quality requirements. This chapter aims to define the technological and nutritional quality characteristics of wheat and to explain wheat properties for specific end-use products.