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The latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine (Dec 2011) contains an excellent discussion of heritage wheat varietals and reincorporating them back into local flavors and regional economies.
In An Amber Wave, Jerry Adler notes, “… there’s something about wheat. It speaks to the American soul like no other crop, even much more valuable ones, which is most of them. Find a penny from before 1959, and what you see on the reverse are two iconic stems of wheat, not a bunch of arugula,” (Adler, p 60).
It seems that wheat is the newest heritage seed craze popular with backyard gardeners, hobby farmers and even more established farmsteads seeking to diversify or to preserve a regional heritage.
One of the most interesting tidbits comes from Adler’s interview with Abdullah Jaradat of the USDA indicating that wheat is one of humanity’s most diverse crops, growing in eco-zones as diverse as the equatorial highlands to Alaska. Jaradat pinpoints two moments of “natural hybridization” that formed the current plant – first between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, and secondly, in Iran near the Caspian Sea some 6,000 to 7,000 years ago. In the article, Jaradat explains that wheat is comprised of a genome that is the longest yet decoded – including the human genome. Part of the complexity is that those ancient hybridizations combined three distinct plants into our modern crop source, (Adler, p 64).
