Rapid dough making quality analysis of wheat flour using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics

James M Kelly; Björn Bohman; Dion Bennett; Nicolas L Taylor

doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.143335

Rapid dough making quality analysis of wheat flour using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and chemometrics

Food Chem. 2025 May 30:475:143335. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.143335. Epub 2025 Feb 10.

Authors

James M Kelly¹, Björn Bohman², Dion Bennett³, Nicolas L Taylor⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Molecular Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
² School of Molecular Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; Department of Plant Protection Biology, The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, 23422, Sweden.
³ Australian Grain Technologies, Northam, WA 6401, Australia.
⁴ School of Molecular Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; The ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; Institute of Agriculture, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; ARC Training Centre in Predictive Breeding for Agricultural Futures, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia. Electronic address: nicolas.taylor@uwa.edu.au.

PMID: 39961207
DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2025.143335

Abstract

Current methods for measuring wheat quality and dough rheology in the later stages of wheat breeding programs, including extensographs and farinographs, are costly and time-consuming. There is a significant interest in the Australian wheat industry for developing non-destructive, field-based, rapid dough-making quality assessment methods for Australian wheat varieties throughout earlier and later stages of the wheat breeding process. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is a valuable tool for analysis and quality control in the food industry as it is a simple and rapid technique requiring no sample pre-treatment before analysis. We aimed to investigate the application of FTIR spectroscopy coupled with partial least squares (PLSR) regression data analysis to rapidly assess wheat flour's dough-making quality. Results indicated that using FTIR data, PLSR could be applied to accurately predict multiple dough-making qualities, including protein content, extensibility, water absorption, dough development time (DDT), dough stability, and maximum resistance to tension (R_max). FTIR spectroscopy could not only be used to accurately predict the dough making quality of wheat lines from an in-sample test dataset, but this method also outperformed genetic predictive analysis, an established quality-prediction method in wheat breeding, in predicting dough making quality using out-of-sample data.

Keywords: Chemometrics; Dough rheology; Infrared spectroscopy; Rapid screening; Wheat breeding.

Publication types

Evaluation Study

MeSH terms

Australia
Bread* / analysis
Chemometrics* / methods
Flour* / analysis
Quality Control
Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared / methods
Triticum* / chemistry