Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Wheat Gluten Proteins and their Contribution to Instant Noodle Quality

This study was carried out to examine the effect of quantity and quality of wheat gluten proteins on the quality attributes of instant fried noodles. Dough development time, dough stability, SDS sedimentation volume, gluten index and Resistance to extension/Extensibility (R/E) ratio were found to be positively correlated with glutenin content, whereas negatively associated with the quantity of gliadin sub-fractions. Medium strong flours were found most suitable for noodle preparation. The weaker flours from cultivars HW 2004 and C 306 having HMW-GS composition of Null, 2+12 and 20 alleles expressed at Glu-A1, B1 and D1, respectively could not withstand sheeting, resulted in rough surface and high breakage of noodles. The best noodle cultivars DBW 16 and WH 542 had 5+10 glutenin subunits at Glu-D1, however, differed in subunits expressed at Glu-A1 and Glu-B1 loci. Oil uptake and cooking time of noodles varied considerably from 15.4 to 22.7% and 2.0 to 4.0 min, respectively. Oil uptake in noodles was positively correlated with dough softening, however, all the parameters related to gluten quality and strength were negatively associated with the oil uptake. Cooking time of instant noodles was found to be highly associated with protein content (R2 = 0.778) of flour, gluten quality and strength. Hardness or firmness of cooked noodles was found to be significantly linked with SDS sedimentation volume (R2 = 0.725), gluten index (R2 = 0.610), glutenin content (R2 = 0.619), gliadin content (R2 = −0.567), R/E ratio (R2 = 0.532) and gliadins/glutenins (R2 = −0.605) ratio.