• Introduction
• Background
• The team
• The barley collection
• Starch characterisation
• Gene discovery
• Fast-track barley breeding
• Our approach in wheat
• Contacts and funding

Starch characterisation

In collaboration with members of our Consortium, we are analysing starches and flours of the mutant barleys with respect to characteristics of interest to end-users of these products. Analyses will be done initially on the barley lines in their original genetic background. However, we will repeat the analyses on harvests of the pre-breeding lines we are developing. This will tell us about the influence of genetic background and environment on starch properties.

Our analyses include:

• Starch granule size
• Starch granule morphology
• Amounts and chain lengths of the starch polymers amylose and amylopectin
• Gelatinisation temperature
• Paste-and gel-forming abilities
• Starch damage (alpha-amylase digestibility)

Comparison of the swelling (gelatinisation) of starch incubated in water at different temperatures for normal barley (bottom) and one of our mutant barleys (top). Note that starch from the mutant starts to gelatinise at a lower temperature than starch from the normal barley: so the energy input required to achieve gelatinisation is less for the mutant. This could be an important consideration in an industrial context.		Viscosity (RVA) profiles for starch heated then cooled (black line is temperature profile) in water. Starch from normal barley (blue line) shows a large increase in viscosity during gelatinisation then a fall as gelatinisation is complete. Viscosity rises again as the starch cools and “sets”. Starch produced from one of our mutants (red line) behaves differently – viscosity develops at a lower temperature, and reaches a greater value than for starch from normal barley