Models of grain quality in wheat—A review

Abstract

Maintaining grain quality of wheat under climate change is critical for human nutrition, end-use functional properties, as well as commodity value. This paper reviews the current knowledge of high temperature and elevated atmospheric CO2 on whole-grain and functional properties of wheat. It also considers the utility of contemporary crop models for investigating the impacts of climate change on wheat quality; and discusses opportunities for advancing model capability. Under elevated CO2 wheat yield can increase by up to 36%, but universally grain protein concentration decreases and a shift in composition translates to reduced functional properties. High temperature during the post-anthesis period of crops can cause a step change reduction in grain-set, grain size and milling yield. Numerous crop models including APSIM-Nwheat, CropSyst, Sirius, GLAM-HTS account for high CO2 effects through modification of RUE, TE or critical leaf-N concentration and high temperature by accelerated leaf senescence, grain number, potential grain weight or HI modifications. For grain quality, however, crop models are typically restricted to predicting average grain size and grain-N content (concentration), although the SiriusQuality model accounts for the major storage proteins, gliadin and glutenin. For protein composition, high temperature stress reduces the glutenin/gliadin ratio and limits the synthesis of the larger SDS-insoluble glutenin polymers which causes wheat dough to have weaker viscoelasticity properties. This link provides an opportunity to model high temperature effects on grain functional properties. Further development and testing, utilizing grain quality data from global FACE programmes will be particularly valuable for validating and enhancing the performance of such models. For whole-grain characteristics, a single-spike model approach, which accounts for intra-spike variation in assimilate deposition may provide an opportunity to predict grain size distribution and associated screenings percentage and milling yield. Taken together expanding the predictive capability of our crop models to grain quality is an important step in providing a powerful tool for developing adaptation strategies for combating the impacts of climate change to global crop production and grain quality.