From the dawn of agriculture, about 10,000 years ago, to modern genetic improvement techniques, wheat has been a key witness and actor in the evolution of human nutrition. Frequently when talking about food, and wheat and its derivatives, one hears the adjective ‘natural’. But the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ in agriculture is often meaningless. Agriculture is, ultimately, a manifestation of human intervention in natural processes. An artificial process, whose resulting products are also artificial. The wheat we eat today does not exist in nature.
Wheat (genus Triticum), native to the fertile Middle East, has undergone an epic journey through time and space. The evolution of wheat has been shaped by artificial selection, from the oldest known species , such as einkorn (Triticum monococcum), farro (T. dicoccum) or spelt (T. spelta), to the modern species of durum wheat (T. durum) and soft or baker’s wheat (T. aestivum). Early farmers learned to choose seeds with desirable characteristics, such as larger, more productive ears or more voluminous grains.
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One of the evolutionary ancestors of modern wheat can still be found in nature. A wild wheat, with a diploid chromosome set – the chromosomes distributed in pairs, specifically, 7 pairs -, which is called Triticum urartu. There are also other wild plants, very closely related to wheat, called goat grass.
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[Editor’s note: This article has been translated from Spanish and edited for clarity]
