New premium quality wheat variety gives soft and sweet chap

What is the News?

Researchers from Punjab Agricultural University have developed a new wheat variety named  ‘PBW1Chapati’.

What is Chapati and why was PBW1Chapati developed?

Chapati is a flat-baked product prepared from wheat. It forms a cheap, primary source of protein and calories and is the staple diet in Northern Western India. 

The desired quality characteristics for chapati are greater pliability, puffability, soft texture and light creamish brown color, and slight chewiness with baked wheat aroma. 

Tall traditional wheat variety C 306 has been the golden standard for chapati quality. Later, PBW 175 variety was developed. However, both these have become susceptible to stripe and brown rusts.

The challenge now was to combine high yield potential and disease resistance and retain the actual chapati quality.

Taking up this challenge, Punjab Agricultural University has developed PBW1Chapati.

PBW1Chapati has a good chapati quality, sweet in taste, and soft in texture. The color of the chapati is also comparably white, and it remains soft even after hours of baking.

Source: The post is based on an article “New premium quality wheat variety gives soft and sweet chap” published in PIB on 27th April 2022.