IMPROVING WHEAT QUALITY FOR PROCESSING AND HEALTH

The Expert Working Group on improving wheat quality for processing and health aims at maintaining and improving wheat quality for processing and health under varying environmental conditions.

It will focus on wheat quality in the broad sense, including seed proteins, carbohydrates, nutrition quality including micronutrients, grain processing and food safety. Bioactive compounds will be considered, both those with negative effects as problems to be resolved, such as allergens and mycotoxins, and those with positive effects to be exploited, such as antioxidants and phenolic compounds.

In general, the potential for including wheat in the human diet as a means of promoting health will be addressed. The group will also share genetic resources and unify gene nomenclature related to grain quality.

This EWG will play a vital role to advance the research area of grain quality and apply scientific knowledge to develop improved varieties of wheat with desirable grain quality attributes for a wide range of end-uses. It will build on existing basic and applied knowledge and expertise, while linking with and utilizing outputs from other international initiatives, wheat research organisations and other Wheat Initiative EWGs.

Proposal
The proposal to establish an Expert Working Group on improving wheat quality for processing and health was submitted by R. Chibbar (Uni Saskatchewan), S. Chulze (UNRC), C. Guzman (Universidad de Cordoba), T. Ikeda (NARO), A. Juhasz (HAS), V. Lullien-Pellerin (INRA), J. Rogers (Uni. Buenos Aires), P. Shewry (Rothamsted Res) in December 2014. The proposal was endorsed by the Research Committee on April 15, 2015.

Call for Experts
Any expert wishing to participate should complete the application form and return it via email to wheat(dot)initiative(at)julius-kuehn(dot)de. The call for experts will thereafter remain open-ended during the EWG lifetime.

Chair: Tatsuya IKEDA

Co-Chair: Carlos GUZMAN