26 Industrial applications of wheat antibodies.

Michel Lauriere. Laboratoire de Chimie Biologique Centre INRA de Grignon, France.

The quality of grains and of their derived products is largely dependent on their biochemical composition. It results from the synergic effects of macro constituents like storage compounds and micro constituents, like enzymes or other less abundant compounds. These constituents act, during industrial processes, generally both through their structure, that determine their functionality, and through their relative amount. Tests that allow the specific detection and quantitative analyses of quality related components, must allow predicting aspects of the product behavior in peculiar industrial processes. For these reasons more biochemical tests, i.e. based on electrophoresis or HPLC analyses are used along with technological tests. The complexity of these new methods, however, restricts their transposition at a large scale to industry. Immunochemical tests designed for the same purpose, are also complex tests, but their protocols can be simplified and adapted for automatic processes. They are well adapted to the quantitative analysis of specific components in crude samples. Their reliability mainly depends on the specificity and on the affinity of the antibodies used. It is relatively easy to produce specific monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies against individual plant proteins. Difficulties arise, however, when these proteins belong to polymorph groups, or when they are poorly soluble in physiological buffers. This is the case encountered for tests based on the measure of wheat storage proteins sub-groups, which are demonstrated to affect bread- making quality. Specific strategies are needed that will be discussed on available examples.