Wheat: Widely Cultivated and Nourishing
Widely cultivated and nourishing
Omnipresent wheat plays a major role for many people at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
You know that muffin you munched on at morning tea? And that burger you enjoyed for lunch? Even the spaghetti bolognaise you’re planning for dinner tonight... I, omnipresent wheat, play a huge part in every one of those meals and many more.
A staple for much of the world, I am a firm favourite amongst you humans. In fact, I am the world’s most widely cultivated crop. New foods embracing me emerge weekly, and I am crucial in food security for the world’s growing population.
Frankly, without me, sitting down to any meal of the day just wouldn’t
be the same for many. I provide the grain in bread and breakfast cereals, and a whopping 97 per cent of the ingredients in your morning bowl of Weet-bix – sans milk.
In fact, you humans have had a love affair with me ever since Neolithic times, when I was still a wild grass swaying in the breeze. These nomadic people gathered and threshed me until my seeds became loose, which they pounded into flat cakes and baked on hot rocks to make the world’s first bread. I was added to a pot of water and simmered over a fire to make a crude gruel.
To say I have a long ancestral history is something of an understatement. My family tree goes back some 12,000 years to a clan of wild grasses located in the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (western Asia and northern Africa) called Triticeae. Through their keen powers of observation, early humans selected grass heads with large seeds and varieties whose grains were easily separated from their hulls.
Some thousands of years later, your farming ancestors began cultivating the more edible of my wild cousins, emmer ( Triticum turgidum) and einkorn, cross-pollinating emmer with a tough, inedible weed called goat grass ( Aegilops tauschii). The result was a pleasing and more reliable type of wheat which gave rise to the varieties you use today for making bread. While they didn’t know it at the time, those goat grass genes contributed to my ability to tolerate cold and disease.
The evolution of agricultural practices and the ability to mill, store and trade my grain not only changed the availability of food for early humans, but helped to start fledgling townships. As people became more established, they travelled further, taking me with them to trade.
Did I mention that I was the ideal commodity? I am dry, so I was easy to transport, simple to transform into food, and able to provide seed for the next year’s crop.
Early trade followed routes in the Mediterranean, with Greek and Roman civilisations being some of the earliest importers of me from West Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I was also thought to have travelled the Silk Road into China.
Through a fortuitous accident around 2600 BCE, I became even more in demand. By mixing beer into f lour, Egyptians produced the first raised loaves of bread. There is even proof of these early loaves of bread in the British Museum. As was discovered all those years ago, gluten, the
TODAY, I CAN BE FOUND GROWING ON EVERY CONTINENT IN THE WORLD
protein component of f lour which gives dough its elasticity, is a valuable commodity in manufacturing products made from me and has greatly enabled the proliferation of processed food.
Eventually, I was farmed wherever I could gain a foothold. And with my popularity growing from strength to strength through the centuries, today I can be found growing on every continent in the world. I can even be found inside the freezing Arctic Circle, along the steamy Equator, and at lofty heights of 4500 metres, such as the Himalayas.
Since the 1960s the world’s production of me has tripled. In that decade, a farmer would average 1.1 tonnes of wheat per hectare. Fast forward to 2020, and things look a whole lot different. Eric Watson, a New Zealand farmer from Ashburton on the Canterbury Plains, set a new Guinness World Record with 17.4 tonnes of wheat per hectare in July last year, breaking his 2017 record of 16.8 tonnes.
I may be able to grow everywhere, but obviously I do better in some places than others. Watson says he owes his ultra-high yielding successes to >>
>> the region’s fertile soils, abundant rainfall and good amounts of sunlight, which provide his crop with a long, slow growing period.
The most prolific form of me eaten today, comprising 95 per cent of all wheat grown, is common wheat ( Triticum aestivum vulgare), which is milled into flour.
Hard varieties of this flour have high proportions of protein and are used for baking bread. Softer varieties, which have lower amounts of protein, are often referred to as ‘cake flour’ and are used for baking cakes and making biscuits, pastries and crackers.
I can also be puffed, flaked and extruded, methods commonly used to manufacture breakfast cereals and muesli bars. My bran can be added to muffins, cakes and bread to increase their fibre content. And by parboiling, drying and coarsely grinding I am turned into bulgur, or cracked wheat, which is found in a wide range of dishes such as tabbouleh and kofta.
Durum ( Triticum turgidum durum) is the second-most cultivated wheat crop and is ground into semolina to make pasta, noodles and couscous. Other varieties of me are spelt, emmer/farro, einkorn and kamut (an ancient grain from prehistoric times that has not changed through modern breeding programmes).
I am high in carbohydrates (71%), a source of protein (although my protein doesn’t provide good quality nutritional value for you humans) and when eaten as whole grain, provide a rich source of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and dietary fibre.
Be aware though, once refined, like the f lour used in white bread and fluffy cakes, my dietary fibre is negligible, so to get my full nutritional value aim for food using whole wheat or whole grain.