Wheat baking quality: The effect of catch crop strategies and species

Summary

Abstract - In organic farming winter wheat is typically grown after good pre-crops, as it pays well for this in terms of yield and quality. However, winter wheat develops slowly during the autumn, and much nitrate may be lost by leaching before spring. System with catch crops followed by spring wheat, or maybe catch crops intercropped with winter wheat could improve the utilization of the pre-crop effects in wheat crop-ping. In this experiment we studied wheat and catch crop root growth, crop and soil N dynamics, and ef-fects on yield and baking quality in wheat cropping systems with catch crops. The results showed that the combination of catch crops and spring wheat increased the yield and decreased the gluten content, but the bread volume was unaffected by the decrease in gluten Intercropping systems with catch crops and winter wheat showed some promising results, but they are also very difficult to manage. The gluten content of winter wheat with intercropping de-creased, however, as for spring wheat the bread vol-ume was relatively higher for intercropping.