Under Hungarian conditions durum wheat must be capable of surviving several days of temperatures as low as –20°C without snow cover. Improving cold tolerance and technological quality simultaneously is no easy matter. The varieties used as sources of cold tolerance did not have satisfactory gluten strength and yellow pigment content, so high quality facultative durum wheat varieties were also included in the crossing programme. A period of ten years was required after gluten index measurements were commenced before over 70% of the new breeding lines had a gluten index significantly better than that of Parus, but since 2009 this proportion has been stable at over 80%. The gluten index of the majority of new winter durum wheat lines developed since the introduction of selection for gluten index is similar to that of high quality spring durum wheat genotypes. The other valuable technological quality trait of durum wheat is high yellow pigment content. The yellow index values of the advanced lines fluctuated over a wide range (17.7–32.2) in different years. Before selection was begun the average yellow index of these lines was 99.2% compared with that of the check variety Parus, while this value had risen to above 120% by 2006. The yellow index of the best lines exceeded that of Parus by 17.5­–70.8% in different years.