Multi-Trait Nutritional Profiles of Swedish Wheat Germplasm Across Breeding Histories

Abstract

Wheat is a major staple crop and an important dietary source of protein, minerals and grain bioactives. Wheat genetic resources for nutritional improvement include landraces, primitive wheats, old cultivars, cultivars and breeding material; however, their value should be evaluated using measured genotype and trait information rather than inferred from germplasm origin alone. This study quantified free, bound and total phenolic compounds and antioxidant capacity in Swedish wheat materials and integrated these data with existing mineral/elemental, carotenoid and tocol-related datasets from overlapping Swedish wheat genotypes. Bound phenolics represented the major phenolic fraction across the evaluated materials. The integrated comparisons indicated genotypic variation across the evaluated nutritional traits. Some old cultivars, including ‘Diamant brun’, ‘Atson’ and ‘Algot’, showed good combinations of several measured nutritional and selected food safety traits, whereas ‘Rauweizen’ was mainly associated with phenolic compounds and antioxidant capacity. Overall, these results show that nutritional variation in Swedish wheat germplasm was related to genotype and trait group rather than to germplasm background alone.