Wheat cultivated with organic fertilizers and urea: Baking performance and dough properties

Data describing white flour composition, dough properties and baking performance of both spring and winter wheat treated with different fertilizer strategies including meat bone meal, slurry manure and urea, were analyzed by principal component analysis and variance analysis. No significant differences in the analyzed variables were found between flour from wheat fertilized with organic fertilizers or urea at different N rates, irrespective of experiment. The differences mainly reflected variation between experiments. Higher N application rates significantly increased flour protein content and dough development time but decreased dough softening. Protein content was positively correlated to wet gluten content and dough stability, development time, resistance, extensibility as well as bread yield. The correlation between protein content and dough softening was negative and the correlation to farinograph water absorption was poor. The bread yield response to increasing protein content, obtained by increasing the N fertilizer rate, was lower in the spring wheat than in the winter wheat.