Predicting Farinograph Stability of Wheat Flour with Mixograph and Glutomatic Tests

Hard red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.; HRSW) flour is typically used to produce wheat-based foods where dough strength is a key quality component. Maintaining acceptable levels of dough strength is an important goal in the development of new HRSW cultivars. In a commercial setting, dough strength is often measured as Farinograph stability, though due to various resource constraints, stability is often predicted in breeding programs via other methods like the Mixograph. The objective of this research was to combine Glutomatic with Mixograph data to determine whether Farinograph stability predictions might be improved over the use of Mixograph data alone. Five hundred and forty flour samples of 33 to 48 HRSW genotypes grown at three locations over years 2015 – 2019 were subjected to Farinograph, Mixograph, and Glutomatic tests. Stepwise linear regression methods and pairwise correlation was used to select independent variables from the combined dataset to predict Farinograph stability. Including Glutomatic data with that of the Mixograph may assist breeders in selecting HRSW breeding lines and cultivars with sufficient levels of dough strength. Midline peak time, midline peak integral, and gluten index were found to be the most significant predictors of Farinograph stability. Stability was affected by the environment from year to year. Analysis on genotype averages was found to be the most useful and least effected by environmental interactions.