Over the second half of the 20th century, plant breeding has developed varieties adapted to high input farming systems and industrial baking, resulting in the replacement of local varieties, which were potentially adapted to the specific soil and climate conditions of each region and had potentially good bread making properties .Recently, however, agricultural practices more environment-friendly such as organic farming have developed leading to an increased diversity in agronomic, soil and ecological conditions. This, together with the growing demand for diversification in terms of product quality, has generated a need for new varieties, general and specific,which are barely met by the standard model of variety innovation.Breeding for organic farming should take several criteria into account: adaptation to the local soil and climatic conditions and to pest and pathogen pressures, weed competition, conformity to the organic specification and specifically growing without chemical inputs and pesticides, no genetic modification, acceptable economic profitability and a high level of nutritional and gustatory quality .
Modern varieties have been bred to provide high yield under high input agricultural conditions and thus they might lack the robustness and quality characteristics that are required for organic agriculture. Up to now, wheat sensory properties have not been systematically included as qualities parameters in the selection of new wheat varieties. However, the availability of suitable wheat varieties is critical for the development of organic agriculture able to meet demands in terms of nutritional and sensory quality.Sensory properties are usually measured through sensory methods as instrumental techniques are still limited to predict human perception . The influence of farming system,hydroponic nft system milling and baking technique including flour type and fermentation and genetic structure on bread sensory properties have been investigated. In order of importance the identified factors are milling technique, baking practice,genetic structure and finally farming system. To summarize,it seems that stone milled breads, wholegrain breads and organic wheat breads have specific sensory properties which are thought to be due to bran compared to conventional bread or white pan bread . They showed more intense aromas such as roasted cereals, bitterness or a crusty texture.This brought to light the close linked between nutritional and sensory qualities of wheat bread.The quantity and quality of grain protein is a first parameter that defines the textural properties of the bread. Among wheat protein the gliadin is implicated in the dough extensibility.
Moreover gliadin is suspected to play a role in gluten sensitivity by acting as inhibitors of alpha-amylase activity in some animals . The pro-vitamin and vitamin content are vital nutrient and their supplementation are important for the treatment of certain health problems. The “antioxidant” hypotheseis that Vitamin E, carotenoids and other antioxidant micronutrients afford protection against chronic disease by decreasing oxidative damage . The predominant carotenoid in wheat is lutein and is suspected to reduce the oxidative damage link to the aging process. Moreover, carotenoid content may affect bread flavour by limiting the development of hexanal, a compound responsible for flavour problems . Minerals content is another source of health benefits. Nevertheless, the availability of minerals depends on phytatecontent which had a decalcifying effect. On a sensory point of view, alkaline metal such as potassium or alkaline earth such as magnesium may contribute to the taste of wheat bread . Finally the different categories of dietary fibres have shown to benefit diabetes, blood cholesterol level, body weight control and reduction of the risk of coronary heart diseases. Moreover some fibres as pentosan are implicated in the textural properties of bread wheat. The genetic variability of population varieties can be expected to improve resilience because of their great adaptation capacity. Moreover,a significant historic evolution on nutritional composition of wheat grain has been observed between pure line varieties and population varieties which suggest that there is a potential for aroma and flavour diversity in population varieties.The farmer bakers from RSP have started to reproduce some of them and are interested in testing their processing in bread.In this context, a French interdisciplinary research programme, PICRI , was launched in 2007 to develop participatory breeding and management methods based on the broad diversity of landraces and historic varieties and to characterize their variability for hedonic, sensory and nutritional quality.The objective of this work was to assess sensory quality of different wheat varieties and mixtures of varieties and correlate with nutritional analyses of the same sample.