Wheat, Gluten and ATI: An Overview

Abstract

In this chapter, the history of wheat cultivation and breeding is described. Wheat originated in the Middle East, spread to Europe and captured the whole world. Modern wheat varieties developed from old ones, namely by breeding and crossbreeding from low-yielding diploid wild wheat to modern hexaploid high-performance wheat. The wheat genome is much larger than the human genome, with almost five times as many genes. The structure of the wheat grain, the content of carbohydrates and a variety of different proteins are presented. The most important proteins in our context are gluten, ATI (amylase trypsin inhibitors) and other allergenic proteins. They either serve as storage protein or regulatory proteins during wheat germ maturation.