Genetic makeup of kernel proteins and durum wheat breeding

In the last two decades quality related durum wheat research has been also aimed to the characterization of section of germplasm collections maintained in gene banks to improve technological properties of wheat flour and semolina by careful manipulation of genetic makeup associated to proteins and starch. At CNR-IGV accessions containing genes and alleles of interest, have been exploited to increase genetic variation at protein loci and to identify useful genes or combinations of alleles holding specific quality attributes far breeding programs. The genetic makeup of kemel proteins from different gennplasm collections of different origins has been detem1ined by biochemical, molecular and recently proteomic approaches. Genotypes selected have been used to produce highly productive resistant wheat lines, suitable far quality and nutritional requirements of the consumers and adaptable to different climatic conditions. The information about allelic composition of the different group of proteins, have also been used to build a databases continuously updated.