The influence of nitrogen amount and timing on wheat protein profiles that represent grain nitrogen nutrition

This thesis investigates the influence of nitrogen application amount and timing on wheat protein profiles across controlled and field experiments with 5 Australian wheat cultivars. Mature grain from controlled experiments in hydroponics, and field trials in Shenton Park and Merredin were utilised for label free quantification mass spectrometry experiments to identify differentially abundant proteins. Next, with the data derived from the previous experiments and a trial in Northam, target mass spectrometry was employed and peptide markers were identified that could offer a direct method of assessing nitrogen nutrition, providing data that could lead to future optimisation of nitrogen management.