Production of monoclonal antibodies to gluten proteins and their use in developing tests for gluten quality

There is a need for rapid, simple tests to give added assurance in gluten quality evaluation which address the needs of plant breeders and the milling and baking industry. As part of fundamental research into gluten protein structure‐function relationships, a library of monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) has been developed to various gluten protein fractions, including both high and low molecular weight subunits of glutenin. The difficulties presented by working with insoluble, heterogeneous gluten proteins in raising MAbs of the requisite specificity are discussed. Several of the MAbs have been used to develop rapid immunoassays which are capable of analyzing a single sample in 10 min, and these have been applied to the quantification of total glutenin proteins, and high and low molecular weight subunits of glutenin in flour samples, illustrating the potential of immunotechnology for monitoring flour quality.