Differences between Wheat Cultivars in Grain Parameters Related to Ethanol Production

Requirement for replacement of energy and fuels from fossil sources by renewable sources also leads to utilization of domestic and local sources of biomass convertible to biofuel. Moreover former and actual troubles in nuclear energy generation could intensify this trend too. Renewable source for biofuel production in countries of temperate zone is also wheat as crop with relatively simply growing technology commonly used in variable growing conditions. Moreover, less favourable conditions and choice of cultivars with lower bread-making quality prefer higher yields of grains, starch, and finally fermented ethanol (Kindred et al., 2008; Burešová and Hřivna, 2011). Generally, several factors influence ethanol yield from seeds of wheat and other cereal (Rosenberger et al., 2002; Wu et al., 2007) such as content and composition of starch, liquefaction efficiency, final viscosity of starch suspension, high content of fermentable sugars. An ultimate relevance to ethanol production from wheat grains relates to starch content and activity of natural α-amylase. Reduced amylose content enhance starch swelling, efficient water binding, lower gelatinisation temperature (Sasaki et al., 2002), and improve starch conversion to ethanol (Rendleman, 2000; Wu et al., 2006, 2007; Zhao et al., 2009). Other factors as protein content, grain hardness, and grain yield also influence ethanol production from wheat grains (Wu et al., 2006, 2007; Swanston et al., 2007; Kindred et al., 2008, Agu et al., 2009). The aim of this study was to compare locally adapted wheat cultivars in parameters of grain related to ethanol yield (content of starch, amylose, and proteins, α-amylase activity, grain hardness, grain yield) with expectation that differences within them allow to estimate the most advanced within them.