Characterization of Intercultivar Variation on the Linear Viscoelastic Network Properties of Wheat Gluten II: Effects of Temperature and L-Cysteine

摘要

Both non-covalent and disulfide bonds are known to be important contributors to the unusual viscoelastic properties of wheat gluten, but it has been difficult to decouple their effects on such. In this work, the effects of added L-cysteine and an increase in temperature on the stress relaxation behavior of three glutens with different high molecular weight subunit composition were compared. An increase in temperature up to 40°C decreased the apparent network strength for all of the glutens, but the decrease in viscoelasticity varied between the glutens w ith d ifferent s ubunit c omposition. 11 w as found that addition of 250 ppm L-cysteine at 25°C to these glutens eliminated most evidence of a network structure in their stress relaxation patterns, but the resulting extended power law stress relaxation curves did not superpose themselves at 25 °C. These results suggest that use of the linear viscoelastic network strength of gluten shows promise as a new tool for assessing the intercultivar variations in gluten network structures.