Improvement of Cereal Quality by Genetic Engineering, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1994

If I had to nominate an area of food production in which science has played a major role in addressing product quality to meet market needs I would not pass by the intimate rela­ tionship of cereaI chemistry with cereaI plant breeding programs. In Australia, cereaI chemistry and product quality labs ha ve long been associated with wheat and barley breeding programs. Grain quality characteristics have been principal factors determining registration of new cultivars. This has not been without pain in Australia. On the one hand some cultivars with promising yield and agronomic characteristics have been rejected on the basis of quality characteristics, and for a period our breeders imposed selection regimes based on yield which resulted in declining quality characteristics. In the end the market provides the critic al signals. For many years Australia held a commanding market position on the basis of a single quality image, initiaHy based on bulked wheat of fair/average quality (FAQ). Later this was improved by segregation into four broad classes* based around Australian Standard White (ASW). This is no longer a viable marketing strategy. We were probably a little slow in rec­ ognising the mosaic of present day wheat markets, but now have up to 18 different grades available. Around the world wheat is a grain with many end uses. Its use in bread is expanding.

Section I Development of Techniques for Transformation of Cereals.- Assessment of Methods for the Genetic Transformation of Wheat.- Genetic Transformation of Wheat.- Approaches to Genetic Transformation in Cereals.- Genetic Engineering of Wheat and Barley.- Genetic Engineering in Rice Plants.- Genetic Engineering of Oat.- Transgenic Grain Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) Plants via Agrobacterium.- Development of Promoter Systems for the Expression of Foreign Genes in Transgenic Cereals.- Anthocyanin Genes as Visual Markers for Wheat Transformation.- Section II Genetic Engineering of Cereal Protein Quality.- Improvement of Barley and Wheat Quality by Genetic Engineering..- Progress towards Genetic Engineering of Wheat with Improved Quality.- The Contributions to Mixing Properties of 1D HMW Glutenin Subunits Expressed in a Bacterial System.- Studies of High Molecular Weight Glutenin Subunits and Their Encoding Genes.- Section III Genetic Engineering of Cereal Starch Quality.- Prospects for the Production of Cereals with Improved Starch Properties.- Genetic Engineering of Resistance to Starch Hydrolysis Caused by Pre-Harvest Sprouting.- Section IV Improvement of Barley Quality by Genetic Engineering.- Potential for the Improvement of Malting Quality of Barley by Genetic Engineering.- Genetic Modification of Barley for End Use Quality.- Section V Regulation of Cereal Genetic Engineering.- The Regulation of the Use of Genetically Engineered Cereals as Foods.- Rapid Cereal Genotype Analysis.- Prospects for Genetic Engineering in the Overall Context of Cereal Chemistry Research.- Contributors.