**4. Marker-assisted wheat breeding for improving quality traits**

Wheat is grown in large parts of the world and is used for animal feed or for a wide range of products such as pasta, biscuits, cakes and bread. The end-use quality differs greatly between wheat cultivars and is influenced by several traits, e.g., grain hardness, grain protein content, gluten content and composition and starch properties. Quality should therefore be an important focus in wheat breeding programs. However, wheat quality cannot be easily determined phenotypically, and different methods are preferred in different countries and industries. Methods for testing quality are typically time-consuming and costly and require relatively large amounts of grain, which is typically not available until late stages of breeding programs. Thus, markers for wheat quality traits can be very useful, as they enable screening of a high number of lines and can be used early in breeding programs [65, 66].
