Evaluation of Carbohydrate Properties and End-Use Quality of Hexaploid Triticale and Its Relationship to Solvent Retention Capacity

Triticale is a competitive grain in foraging, but it has only limited usage in the food industry due to its relatively unfavorable end-use quality. Improvement of carbohydrate characteristics could be an option to partially compensate for its weaker protein quality and to have positive influences on technological properties. In the present study, carbohydrate composition and its relation to baked bread properties of triticale whole meal flour were studied, and utilization of the solvent retention capacity (SRC) method to predict bread-making quality was evaluated. Carbohydrate composition of the analysed triticale genotypes exhibited notable genetic variance with advantageous carbohydrate composition. Many carbohydrate parameters, including damaged starch, total starch, total dietary fiber and sugar concentrations and arabinoxylans levels, influenced the baked bread characteristics and SRC profiles of the triticale. Values for triticale whole meal bread properties were between those of wheat and rye, and triticale genotypes, with bread properties most similar to wheat, showed the same SRC profile as wheat. Therefore, SRC values could be used to predict bread-making quality of triticale genotypes; in particular, based on results of correlation analyses, lactic acid SRC % is a more specific test, for assessing bread-making quality.