Milling and Bread-Making Traits Associated with Grain Hardness in Ethiopian Bread Wheat Varieties Grown Under Bale Condition

Many food processing industries utilizing bread wheat as a raw material are being established in the country. As a result, information on physico-chemical characteristics to match end use quality is very essential. In line with this, the current study was initiated with objectives to characterize physico-chemical properties in relation to bread making quality and to classify bread wheat cultivars as soft and hard wheat based on data generated. The grain of 44 Ethiopian improved bread wheat cultivars were collected from different agricultural research centers in the country and grown under rain fall condition at two locations (Ginnir and Sinana on station) during Bona (July-Jan., 2015/16 and 2016/17) growing season and analyzed for grain physical and flour chemical quality characteristics. The experiment was laid out in RCBD with three replications. Result of analysis of variance indicated that, there is significant variations in all quality parameters considered among cultivars. Grain physical characteristics, such as thousand kernel weight (TKW), percent vitreous kernel (%Vk), were showed highly significant difference (P0.01) due to cultivars. Grain chemical quality as expressed by protein quantity (%P) and quality, percent gluten index (% Gl), Zeleny index (Zl), have also shown highly significant difference (P0.01) due to genotypes. In addition, strong environmental variation was observed on measured quality characters. The present results indicated that there is huge genetic variation among Ethiopian wheat varieties for quality traits considered in this study.