Among the three major food crops (rice, wheat and maize), wheat is unique in accumulating gluten proteins in its grains. Of these proteins, the high and low molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs and LMW-GSs) form glutenin macropolymers that are vital for the diverse end-uses of wheat grains. In this work, we developed a new series of deletion mutants lacking one or two of the three Glu-1 loci (Glu-A1, -B1 and -D1) specifying HMW-GSs. Comparative analysis of single and double deletion mutants reinforced the suggestion that Glu-D1 (encoding the HMW-GSs 1Dx2 and 1Dy12) has the largest effects on the parameters related to gluten and dough functionalities and breadmaking quality. Consistent with this suggestion, the deletion mutants lacking Glu-D1 or its combination with Glu-A1 or Glu-B1 generally exhibited strong decreases in functional glutenin macropolymers (FGMPs) and in the incorporation of HMW-GSs and LMW-GSs into FGMPs. Further examination of two knockout mutants missing 1Dx2 or 1Dy12 showed that 1Dx2 was clearly more effective than 1Dy12 in promoting FGMPs by enabling the incorporation of more HMW-GSs and LMW-GSs into FGMPs. The new insight obtained and the mutants developed by us may aid further research on the control of wheat end-use quality by glutenin proteins.Wheat is one of the major food crops in the world. Compared with other major cereals like rice and maize, wheat has unique end-use traits that are important for making a variety of globally consumed foods, such as various types of bread and noodles 1 . Two main families of gluten proteins, i.e., glutenins and gliadins, are involved in the formation of wheat end-use quality. The glutenins can be further divided into two subfamilies, high molecular weight glutenin subunits (HMW-GSs) and low molecular weight glutenin subunits (LMW-GSs), while gliadins contain four subfamilies, α/β-, γ-, δ-and ω-gliadins 2-4 . During dough processing, these proteins form a complex network (i.e., gluten), which confers viscoelasticity to the dough. The viscoelastic property of a dough determines its suitability for making a particular type of wheat food 2, 5 . Thus, variations in the relative amount and composition of glutenins and gliadins have important effects on gluten functionality, dough viscoelasticity, and end-use quality 6,7 .In common wheat (Triticum aestivum, 2n = 6x = 42), HMW-GSs are encoded by three homoeologous loci (Glu-A1, Glu-B1 and Glu-D1) on the long arms of group 1 chromosomes 8 . In each locus, there exist two HMW-GS genes, encoding a x-and a y-type subunits, respectively 7, 9 . Because of gene silencing and allelic variation, three to five HMW-GSs are usually expressed in common wheat, with HMW-GS composition often differing among different cultivars 2,8 . The LMW-GSs are encoded by Glu-A3, Glu-B3 and Glu-D3 loci on the short arms of group 1 chromosomes 10 . In general, each Glu-3 locus contain several LMW-GS genes highly similar in nucleotide sequence and expression pattern, and each LMW-GS gene member frequently has two or more alleles 11,...