Effects of Different Fertilizer Treatments, Environment and Varieties on the Yield-, Grain-, Flour-, and Dough-Related Traits and Cookie Quality of Weak-Gluten Wheat

Abstract

Weak-gluten wheat is the main raw material for crisp and soft foods such as cookies, cakes, and steamed breads in China. However, it remains challenging to find an appropriate fertilization regime to balance the yield and quality of wheat for special uses (such as cookie making). Here, four nitrogen (N) fertilizer treatments were compared in terms of effects on the yield-, grain-, flour-, and dough-related traits and cookie quality of nine weak-gluten wheat varieties. Compared with other treatments, the treatment M (which had 180 kg ha−1 N fertilizers with basal fertilizer:tillering fertilizer:jointing fertilizer = 5:1:4) was a superior fertilization strategy as it could ensure a higher yield (4.46 kg block−1) and proper traits related to cookie quality. Moreover, environmental conditions and wheat genotypes exhibited significant effects on many quality-related traits. The quality of Chinese crisp biscuits showed a significant association with unit weight, redness, and solvent retention capacity in lactic acid solution, while that of American cookies was influenced by thousand-grain weight, hardness, rate of yield flour, and formation time as indicated by the Mantel test. Additional Pearson correlation analysis demonstrated that thousand-grain weight, hardness, and rate of yield flour can affect the quality of American cookies. Our findings demonstrate that it is necessary to comprehensively consider local conditions, variety selection, and optimal fertilization to achieve high-quality weak-gluten wheat for cookie making.