THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STARCH SWELLING PROPERTIES, PASTE VISCOSITY AND BOILED NOODLE QUALITY IN WHEAT FLOURS

Selection of wheat breeding lines with improved quality for white, Japanese-style noodles is frequently deferred in Australian wheat breeding programmes until final stages of testing, due to the lack of suitable small-scale tests. In this study, the starch swelling power test was investigated, particularly for its suitability as a small-scale test for predicting noodle eating quality. In addition, two new tests based on the swelling volume of starch and flour are reported. For samples from 13 cultivars at two sites, starch swelling power and starch swelling volume were significantly (P < 0·01) correlated with starch paste peak viscosity (r = 0·80, and r = 0·81, respectively), This suggests that these tests may provide similar information on the starch characteristics of these cultivars. For starch separated from 13 flours that had previously been evaluated in Japan for noodle eating quality, starch swelling power and starch swelling volume were significantly (P < 0·01) correlated with total texture score of the boiled noodles (r = 0·84, and r = 0·88, respectively). Flour swelling volume was not as highly correlated as starch swelling volume with individual components of the texture of the boiled noodles, but nevertheless variation in flour swelling volume accounted for 48% of the variation in total texture score. © 1991, Academic Press Limited. All rights reserved.