Colour screening of whole meal flours and discrimination of seven Triticum subspecies

Whole meal flours from several Triticum subspecies and cropped in two different years were scored for carotenoid content as well as for CIE L*, a* and b* coordinates by a colorimeter and a spectrophotometer, and for colour (R, G, B, I), heterogeneity and texture parameters by image analysis to assess the power of the different approaches to discriminate the groups. The results demonstrate that the colour coordinates L* a* b*, and R, G, B, I are not determined by carotenoid content only. However multivariate approaches considering the absorbance spectra or the carotenoid content along with colour coordinates allowed a good separation of species and, in general, of subspecies. On the contrary, the GLMC image data did not lead to a clear discrimination among species and subspecies.