A Rapid Detection of Whole Wheat Gluten Quality by a Novel Chemometric Technique—GlutoPeak

Abstract

The study aims to accurately detect gluten quality of whole wheat flour without a refining process by measuring gluten aggregation properties with a novel and non-destructive chemometric technique called GlutoPeak, coupled with principal component analyses (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analyses (HCA). For this purpose, whole wheat flour samples from 125 common bread wheat cultivars were analyzed for protein content (PC), wet gluten content (WGC), and Zeleny sedimentation value (SV). The correlations of GlutoPeak indices (peak maximum time, PMT; maximum torque, MT; torque 15 s before MT, AM; torque 15 s after MT) with other conventional wheat quality parameters were evaluated. Results indicated that MT had high correlations with WGC (r = 0.627, p < 0.05) and PC (r = 0.589, p < 0.05) while PC (r = 0.511, p < 0.05) and WGC (r = 0.566, p < 0.05) values had moderate correlations with the GlutoPeak PM index. Considering the effect of regions, the MT and PM GlutoPeak indices are powerful parameters to discriminate whole wheat flour samples by their gluten strengths. In conclusion, the GlutoPeak test can be a powerful and reliable tool for prediction of refined and unrefined wheat quality without being time-consuming.