Wheat
Wheat is not just wheat. Six
classes and more than 30,000 varieties of wheat make
possible the hundreds of favorite wheat foods enjoyed
worldwide.
The miller analyzes the wheat, then blends it to meet the requirements of the end use. This science of analysis, blending, grinding, sifting and blending again - milling science - results in consistent, high-quality, healthful products.
For example, hard wheat flours provide for a variety of bread products; durum semolina and flour are used in pasta.
A blend of soft and hard wheats produces Asian noodles. Soft wheats produce an array of crackers, cookies, cereals, cakes, pancakes, breading and pastries. Pets, fish, shrimp and livestock are equally lucky to be guaranteed quality feeds. Beyond human and animal nutrition, millers provide the "glue" that keeps our walls papered and other building products affordable and available.
One edible grain has become meshed with cultures and foods all over the world. This is the story of from wheat to flour.
The Seed
More than 17,000 years ago, humans gathered the seeds of plants and ate them. After rubbing off the "glumes," or husks, early people simply chewed the kernels raw, parched or simmered. Wheat originated in the "cradle of civilization" in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley, near what is now Iraq. More than 8,000 years ago, Swiss lake dwellers ground and mixed early wheat with water, then baked it to make unleavened cakes or bread. The Egyptians reveal both wheat and the discovery of leavened bread in ancient tombs almost 5,000 years old. The Chinese record growing wheat in 2,700 B.C.
The Roman goddess, Ceres, who was deemed protector of the grain, gave grains their common name today - "cereal." Seven cereal grains largely sustain and nourish humankind. Six of these are part of primitive history. Oldest to youngest, they are millet, oats, barley and wheat, with rye and maize, or corn, following. Rice has a history all its own. Wheat is now the principal sustaining grain for people all over the world. Credit for its first discovery and cultivation cannot be given to any certain person or place. However, archaeologists can come close.
Wheat's earliest ancestors are wild einkorn, or "one-seed" and emmer. Archeologists have found kernels of both wild and cultivated einkorn and emmer in excavated villages in Egypt and southwestern Asia's Fertile Crescent, the area between the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.
Archeological discoveries such as the one at Abu Hureyra - in what is now northern Syria - provide insight into how early Neolithic people, beginning from about 10,000 to 9,500 years ago, moved from being gatherers to farmers. They began by cultivating the grains of einkorn, emmer, oats, and barley, as well as the edible seeds, or pulses, of chickpeas and lentils.
The ability to cultivate grain marked the beginning of civilization. Once people settled in one place, crafts, arts and communication - both verbal and written - flourished. Religious practices, economic and political power, and even wars resulted, making the availability and control of wheat a vital part of human history.
The Plant
A sure way to identify plants is by their chromosomes. The earliest wheat ancestors contained 14 chromosomes, which means they were "diploid." Early wheat plants looked like grass and had fragile stems with hulls that clung to the grain. This made them hard to thresh but perfect for reseeding themselves.
Primitive women first gathered einkorn, or Triticum monococcum (trit'-i-cum mahn-uh-kah'-cum), selecting it for its larger seeds and ease of threshing and harvesting. Their success led early humans away from hunting societies as the new agrarian communities thrived on cultivated crops.
A natural outcross between einkorn and the 14-chromosome Triticum spletoides (trit'-i-cum spel-toy'-dees) produced a wild wheat called Triticum turgidum (trit'-i-cum tur'-ji-duhm), which had 28 chromosomes, making it a tetraploid. This new wild species led to emmer, which was soon cultivated throughout the Middle East. The durum wheat now grown in the United States to make pasta and couscous was originally selected from the wild emmer wheat with large easy-to-thresh grains.
Modern bread wheat varieties have 42 chromosomes. These wheats evolved from a natural outcross between emmer wheat and another diploid wheat, Triticum tauschii (trit'-i-cum tow'-she-eye). This wheat was the source of the unique glutenin genes that give bread dough the ability to form gluten. Gluten provides bread dough the elasticity it needs to trap gas produced by fermenting yeast and therefore to "rise" or expand.
The wheat plant grows to a height of between 24 inches for dwarf varieties to 36 inches and even seven feet in some very old varieties. The principal parts of the plant area the roots (between three to eight feet in depth), the culms (stems), leaves, and spikes (head).
Graphic - Parts of the wheat grain head
Today, the grain head, not the straw or dried stem, is the goal for production, so the shorter varieties are much more popular with farmers. Shorter stems stand better and don't bend as easily, making them less vulnerable to wind or rain damage and easier to harvest.
A Class Act
Six classes bring order to the thousands of varieties of wheat. The classes are hard red winter, hard red spring, soft red winter, durum, hard white, and soft white. They all have origins in seeds that were hand-picked and carried to the United States by European farm immigrants.
Wheat Varieties
For centuries, wheat plants were improved by carefully selecting the best grain from certain well-adapted plants during harvest. Selection was based on reliability of growth and harvest, productivity, disease-resistance, and suitability for their food use. This select grain was used for seed the next year. Because wheats are self-pollinating, they held their characteristics in succeeding generations.
At the turn of the century, plant scientists began to produce new varieties through hybridization and wheat breeding. Parent plants were selected for their desirable traits - greater disease and insect resistance, ease in harvesting, shorter growing seasons, better milling and baking qualities, and higher yields. Parent wheats possessing the desired traits were crossed by covering or exposing select plants during pollination.
Today, wheat breeders select within these new populations of wheat the characteristics they seek to improve. The ones chosen are grown in fields (field-tested) and evaluated for their strengths in production, milling and baking quality. Only the seed selections that pass all the tests are made available to farmers to grow.
Modern wheat breeders are geneticists who scientifically develop wheat varieties to meet the needs of farmers, millers and bakers. It is not an overnight process, it takes 10 to 12 years of lab and field tests at a cost of around $500,000 per new variety before a seed wheat can be released for production.
Advances in wheat breeding focus on certain genes in the chromosome arrangement of reproductive cells that control specific desirable characteristics of the plant.
The wheat breeder has a wheat gene bank offering selections from about 30 different wheat species. Included are the earliest wheat species and grasses that originally crossed to produce wheat.
By mapping the location of important traits or attributes on the wheat chromosomes, wheat researchers produce a genetic roadmap for wheat. Being able to better examine qualities in the lab before doing field testing saves valuable time and resources for the wheat breeder and wheat industry. Testing time may be reduced by as much as two years yet produce better results.
Where Wheat is Grown
Wheat is an extremely versatile crop. The six classes and their thousands of varieties make it possible to plant wheat fields at sea level or on rolling, high-altitude slopes. Wheat is grown from Florida to the Canadian border, in the arid Arizona and on coastal plains. In fact, somewhere in the world, wheat is being harvested every month of the year.
Spring wheats are planted just prior to or in April. They do not go through a dormant stage, but mature until harvested.
Planting of winter wheats begins before September in the northern United States and continues through October in the southern regions. These "winter" wheats will sprout and grow in the fall until a winter freeze occurs. The wheat will then become dormant until spring, when it will mature until harvest. Winter wheat is harvested in May in the southern regions and goes through July in the
- Wheat Products
- Wheat Milling Methods: A closer look inside the mill shows us how flour is made and the great care and science used to make this basic ingredient for so many favorite foods. Every mill is just a little different, depending on the kind of flour needed for the end product. However, most mills follow most of the steps in roughly the same order. Those steps are described in this section.
- An Overview of Wheat Development, Cultivation, & Production by W.A. Atwell, Cargill Bake Lab, Minnetonka Minnesota
- Image Library
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