'Sweet Wheat' for Tastier and More Healthful Baking

"Sweet wheat" has the potential for joining that summertime delight among vegetables -- sweet corn -- as a tasty and healthful part of the diet. Sweet wheat (SW) originated from mutations in field wheat. Toshiki Nakamura, Tomoya Shimbata and colleagues developed SW from two mutant types of wheat that each lack a different enzyme needed to make starch. Because the new wheat has much more sugar than regular wheat, they called it "sweet wheat. SW flour is sweeter, and SW seeds and flour contained higher levels of sugars, lipids and dietary fiber than seeds and flours of other wheat varieties.