KGPA LTD/ALAMY
Posted on 06/19/2024 9:20:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
...When plant breeders created modern wheat during the 19th and 20th centuries, they focused on crossing and selectively breeding a few key varieties, creating a finicky racehorse of a crop: high yielding but vulnerable to disease, heat, and drought and reliant on a liberal application of fertilizer. Part of the solution, according to a study published today by Nature, may lie in the genetic diversity in 827 kinds of wheat, many of them long vanished from farms...
Already scientists have identified genes that, if bred into modern wheat, could reduce the crop's need for nitrogen fertilizer and increase its resistance to wheat blast, a disease now threatening harvests in much of the world.
The landrace collection was assembled in England starting in 1924, when Arthur Ernest Watkins joined the University of Cambridge's Plant Breeding Institute. Watkins was studying wheat anatomy, examining variation in traits such as the leaflike structures at the top of the stalk. He realized these traits might help with differentiating landraces. So, he convinced the London Board of Trade to collect wheat samples on his behalf. Over 2 decades, consuls and business agents across the British Empire and beyond visited local markets and bought grain that had been grown in as many environments as possible, acquiring 7000 samples of wheat from 32 countries.
Ever since, curators kept the collection viable by sowing and collecting seeds every few years—a practice interrupted only by World War II, when some landraces were lost. Meanwhile, in the wider world, farmers stopped growing many of these landraces as new, high-yielding wheat arrived. Others lost their uniqueness as curious farmers inter-bred them with the modern varieties.
(Excerpt) Read more at science.org ...
Pulling dusty and questionable memories from deep in my old brain: Older varieties of wheat were very tall because of the need for straw. Then in the early 1900s the Japanese started producing shorter wheat that didn’t get blown down by the wind nearly as much (lodging). And then those short varieties became popular everywhere.
Kansas flatlander here. We grow a little wheat. And when I say little I mean little. In the 1970s if you went running across a mature wheat field it was waist high on any adult. Toddlers would not be tall enough to find their way thru it it was so tall.
A few decades later...
Here we are with custom GMO wheat that has been genetically modified to only grow to be about 16-18” tall. No more waste just growing the stalk saves more energy for stockpiling and putting the nutrients into the grain of the wheat. Handily it also fits perfectly with the new $2mil design of John Deere custom combine wheat cutters that cut fast and clean with the wheat growing right into the middle of the wheat combines new cutting blades! And Monsanto says “No problem!” with that fancy GMO’s wheat. As long as we got RoundUp and ‘rust” preventative when it rains too much, and center pivot irrigation systems to makeup for water loss, internally combusting fossil fuel machines we should have no problems helping the world feed its own.
So we’ll be able to get real Wheaties again?
No. Us peasants will eat bugs and Weedies...
Stay away from Wheaties. Have you seen what they did to Bruce Jenner?
Currently Oldest Daughter is raising Ivan Tomatoes for her produce stand. She has orders from two local ridiculously expensive restaurants for not only the Ivan but other heirloom produce she can raise.
The Big Ag guys will not raise the stuff she does because it is more trouble, goes bad faster and does not travel well. It is also absurdly delicious.
She and millions of people like her are saving seeds for the future and producing new varieties.
Apparently, him moving to Kellogg’s wasn’t such a good idea.
“The Big Ag guys will not raise the stuff she does because it is more trouble, goes bad faster and does not travel well. It is also absurdly delicious.“
There’s a strawberry variety of which the above is true. They use it for frozen applications only.
Garden ping
We have a patch of Alpine Strawberries. A pain to pick and go bad in about day but oh so good.
The short variety is grown here, handy for farmers who don’t keep animals and therefore don’t need the straw.
I avoid wheat and processed food-most of that contains wheat products-the new varieties are just empty carb storage units to make us fat-and full of GMO’s as well as pesticides. There are some small farms that grow old variety grains and stone grind them to flour. If others start growing naturally disease/pest resistant grains that don’t have a Monsanto stamp on them, we could all benefit healthwise...
Alpines must be them, ya gotta freeze them on the spot. I think there’s corn they do that with too.
Not just wheat, but other food grains and fruit crops have an inadequately appreciated profusion of varieties that are endangered or already lost due to modern agricultural practices. Apples, in particular, have many hundreds of types with unique traits and tastes.
There are (or used to be) at least 2000 apple varieties in the US, but of course there could well have been multiple names for the same variety and there, probably no DNA analysis.
The number of tomato varieties used to be estimated at 5000, but the generations are shorter, so they probably have been a lot more than that, coming and going.
Years ago, the germ plasm storage facility that at least used to be in Iowa I think was selecting stuff to germinate to keep the stored seeds viable, and found an overlooked seed packet from the second half of the 19th century, a long-gone seed company’s tomato variety. The germination rate was enormous, and the folks at the lab estimated that it would take at least 250 years in storage for the germination rate of that variety to fall below 50%.
The many varieties of food crops and trees are a remarkable human accomplishment that ought to be more appreciated.
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