Antioxidant activity of wheat grains

The purpose of this study was to examine the reductive antioxidant properties of methanol extracts of wheat grains. Three wheat varieties (GK Garaboly, GK Kalász and GK Petur) grown in the experimental field of the Cereal Research Non-Profit Company in Szeged in the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 were investigated. Two reagents, iron(III) chloride and 2,2′-dipyridyl dissolved in absolute ethanol, were used to characterize the antioxidant effect of the methanol extract of the defatted whole grains. Fe 3+ was transformed into Fe 2+ by the reductive agents of the extract and a red Fe 2+ complex was formed with 2,2′-dipyridyl. Colour intensity was measured spectrophotometrically and the absorbances found were converted to amounts of L-ascorbic acid (L-AS) in mg after calibration. The “reducing capacity” (RC), was introduced, i.e. the quantity of L-AS (mg) in 1000 g defatted wheat grains determined by this method. The examinations revealed that different quantities of given fertilizers did not influence the RC values for a particular variety. The fungicide-treated and control samples did not display characteristic differences in RC value for the same variety. The different varieties exhibited different characteristic RC values. The RC values proved to be dependent on the crop year. The determination of RC values is a relatively rapid method and these values can be used as important biological characteristics of different wheat grains

Effects of fertilizers and fungicides applied in various doses and combinations on baking characteristics of wheat

Experiments were carried out with wheat varieties GK Garaboly, GK Kalász, GK Verecke, GK Petur sown at the Öthalom experimental station of the Cereal Research Non-Profit Ltd. in monoculture, in a four-parallel random block design. NPK fertilizer treatments of different level were combined with Artea + Amistar Xtra fungicide treatments of increasing doses and spectrum.The fertilizer and fertilizer + fungicide treatments had a statistically reliable effect at the 0.1% level on the technological water absorption only while it was indifferent on the values such as wet gluten content, gluten spreading, baking value and falling number. On annual level reliable treatment × variety interactions could be detected for each characteristic compared to control.Increasing fertilizer doses tendentiously improved the values of wet gluten, baking value and technological water absorbance. In the case of certain treatment combinations, however, these values exhibited a tendentious decrease as the counter-effect of fungicides applied at the heading stage of development. Our results revealed that the baking quality of grains was determined by the common effect of various doses of fertilizers and fungicides Artea and Amistar Xtra applied at heading. This counter-effect proved to be unfavourable in the case of certain baking characteristics.Six different alleles or allelic pairs were revealed in the sample of genotypes — 1, 2* (locus Glu-A1), 6 + 8, 7 + 8 and 7 + 9 (locus Glu-B1) and 5 + 10 (Glu-D1). Quality scores for the wheat cultivar varied from 8 to 10. Cultivar GK Kalász had the highest quality score 10