Functional properties of two low-molecular-weight glutenin subunits carrying additional cysteine residues from hybrid introgression line II-12 derived from Triticum aestivum and Agropyron elongatum

The functional properties of the various alleles of the low-molecular-weight glutenin subunits (LMW-GS) have not been widely addressed, even though they are important in the context of wheat end-use quality improvement. Two LMW-GS alleles introgressed into bread wheat from tall wheatgrass via asymmetric somatic hybridization differ from the norm by encoding either two or three additional cysteine residues. These genes were isolated and expressed heterologously in Escherichia coli to obtain sufficient product amounts for incorporation into the flour of a poor quality cultivar for the purpose of a micro-mixing test. Their effect was to decrease both the time to peak dough resistance and the peak width, while having no effect on either the 8 min curve width or the right of peak slope. Several effects on wheat dough properties were discussed in this paper.