WILD GRASS, TAME GRAIN

The most beautiful grain you can hold in your hand is corn.  In particular, heritage corn, still on the cob, can be as beautiful as any jewels.

white Sioux corn

blue glass corn

blue corn

But while still in the field and still growing but almost ready to harvest -- now that its heads are golden -- is wheat grown over vast territories and swirled by the wind until it waves like the sea.  Even after being cut and after the snows begin, the stubble shines gold against the sky-reflecting blue snow until the two colors become iridescent in long lines reaching over the nearest swelling horizon.

Nothing is more ugly, enacting death, than a chemically fallowed field.  Gray, dull, and poisoned, it eats light.  Those living nearby are on the brink of cancer and lawsuits.

The kind of wheat for bread and noodles is a trilogy of wild grasses who joined together, the original three sisters.  The first two joined to create "emmer wheat", at least 19,000 years old and gathered by Egyptians before they figured out how to grow it.  It has low but not absent gluten and can grow in poor soil.

Einkorn wheat is as early or earlier than emmer wheat and is said to be safe for those with gluten problems.   ". . .the first domestication of wild einkorn was recorded approximately around 7500 BC. It is believed to originate from the fertile areas of the Tigris-Euphrates regions. The origination of the wheat is believed to be a result of crossing the Triticum speltoides (wheat grass) and Triticum monococcum (domesticated wheat) naturally."  https://www.einkorn.com/einkorn-history/   Otzi, the ancient man who melted out of the glaciers, had traces of einkorn in his stomach.

"Spelt (Triticum spelta; Triticum dicoccum^[2]), also known as dinkel wheat^[3] or hulled wheat,^[3] is a species of wheat cultivated since approximately 5000 BC.  Spelt was an important staple in parts of Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times; it now survives as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain, and has also found a new market as a 'health food'. Spelt is sometimes considered a subspecies of the closely related species common wheat (Triticum aestivum), in which case its botanical name is considered to be Triticum aestivum subsp. spelta. It is a hexaploid wheat, which means it has six sets of chromosomes."   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelt  

A recent article in Nature magazine is about a relatively modern wheat variety called "Chinese Spring" which explains why most of the thinking about genetics of wheat is based on that particular variety.  Wheat was developed and used very early in China which explains noodles and dumplings that can be made over a small fire.  We think of wheat as Mediterranean.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-05312-1

The first two wild grasses joined before cultivation and the third joined after human intervention, maybe uninvited.  This means all three grass genomes are preserved so that the result has 16 billion genes -- chromosomes are the strings of genes that keep them organized even in replication.  "This means that it has six copies of each of its seven chromosomes; the complete set numbering 42 chromosomes. In contrast, the human genome is diploid, with 23 pairs of chromosomes and a total of 46 chromosomes."  Having so many genes means that it is late being analyzed.

Wheat is already cross-bred to get various results.  We see experimental plots around Valier, marked with fences and signs, but surely their pollen travels with the wind.  Scientists and farmers try to develop better nutrition, fewer allergens, and faster growing times, which are all matters of molecular interaction.  One of the specialties is stem research, trying to achieve short, sturdy, solid stems that will resist rain or even hail, as well as eliminating the hollow space where certain insects raise their babies and then cut the stem to drop the new bugs to the ground.  

Probably the plan to produce "Roundup Ready" wheat full of glyphosate to kill insects is doomed for two reasons:  it turns up in weeds who grab the pollen with its characteristics and it now shows up in breakfast cereal, esp. those based on oats like Cheerios.  No one knows what it really does, esp to humans, but it is certainly a vivid example of how everything is connected.

And also paradoxical:  gluten may poison some people, but it is important to baking.  One-third of consumers avoid gluten, which explains the heavy marketing slogans.  But gluten being gluey is what makes it sticky in mixing and rising in the oven.  People who suffer from it are reacting to it as if it were a foreign substance and therefore it is an autoimmune trigger.  One can also be allergic to wheat.

For some uses, high gluten is a plus, thus bread flour or cake flour.  For other foods it is a minus.  People use other substances, like potato or rice, to make gluten-free flatbreads.  However, corn is from a different branch of the grain family than the gluten grains wheat, barley, and rye. 

Corn contains a substance known as "corn gluten," which sounds scary, but isn't the same gluten that bothers people with celiac or gluten sensitivity.  In the Southwestern United States, corn flour is known as "masa," or "dough" in Spanish. Masa is made from corn that has been soaked in lime water overnight, dried and then ground. This flour is useful for making corn tortillas, tamales, empanadas and other items in Latin cooking.

Indigenous peoples of the Americas often have problems with intolerance of both lactose and wheat, since neither milk nor wheat originated on the American continents.  This is ironic for lovers of flatbread.  It's possible that with a map of wheat genomes, CRISPR could be used to create a kind of fry bread that doesn't make problems for tribal people, but it may turn out to be a "flat" (non-rising) bread since it is the gluten that makes the bread rise.  Already there are enzymes a person can take in order to eat ice cream without a stomach ache.  Until then, beans and rice!  Use those workarounds.