Cereals are the major sources of energy and provide proteins, dietary fibre, minerals, vitamins and other nutritional factors to the human beings. Among cereals, wheat, barley, rice and maize are the major sources of food and feed. There are large numbers of cereal based products being consumed across the world all of which have specific quality requirements. In addition cereals have been explored for their use in several industrial applications such as bio-fuels and biodegradable products. Therefore, improving quality of cereals for food, feed and industrial applications has paramount importance in world economy. However, the improvement in the processing and nutritional quality of cereals depends on understanding the chemical and the genetic constituents governing quality traits. Excellent progress has been made in understanding the chemical and molecular basis of cereal quality. The book contains detailed aspects of the quality requirements of different products of wheat, rice, maize and barley and also the chemical and molecular components governing these traits. The strategy to improve these cereals using markers assisted selection and transgenic approach has been discussed in greater detail in the book.

Sewa Ram: Principal Scientist, Plant Biochemistry, Quality and Basic Science, Directorate of Wheat Research (ICAR), Agrasain Marg, Karnal-132 001, Haryana, India

B. Mishra, Vice-Chancellor, Sher-e Kashmir University of Agriculture Science and Technology Jammu, (J & K) and Formerly, Project Director, Directorate of Rice Research Hyderabad, Directorate of Wheat Research (ICAR), Agrasain Marg, Karnal-132 001, Haryana, India

01. World wheat production, consumption and utilization 02. Bread quality 03. Soft wheat product quality 04. Durum quality 05. Dough Rheology and chemical tests 06. Gluten structure, genetics and functionality 07. Wheat grain hardness 08. Wheat starch structure, biosynthesis and quality 09. Nutritional quality of wheat. 10. Molecular breeding and transgenic approach for the improvement of wheat grain quality 11. Barley malt, feed and food quality 12. Processing and nutritional quality of rice 13. Processing and nutritional quality of maize