OPPORTUNITIES FOR MANIPULATING THE SEED PROTEIN-COMPOSITION OF WHEAT AND BARLEY IN ORDER TO IMPROVE QUALITY

Wheat and barley are the major temperate cereals, being used for food, feed and industrial raw material. However, in all cases the quality m ay be limited by the amount, composition and properties of the grain s torage proteins. We describe how a combination of biochemical and mole cular studies has led to an understanding of the molecular basis for b readmaking quality in wheat and feed quality in barley, and also provi ded genes encoding key proteins that determine quality. The control of expression of these genes has been studied in transgenic tobacco plan ts and by transient expression in cereal protoplasts, providing the ba sis for the production of transgenic cereals with improved quality cha racteristics.