wheat is a member of the grass family, andif you like bread, cake, or crackers -- at least, the kind with wheat in them -- thenyou’re already a fan. we use about 550 million metric tons of thestuff a year. and these days, farmers and researchers arenoticing a rising demand for the return of different kinds of wheat -- partly becausespecialty foods are becoming more popular, but also because they’d make our crops morediverse. specifically, people are interested in hulledwheat, which is similar to the kinds of wheat that were grown in ancient times, like spelt,emmer, and einkorn. which is why, on january 13th, a researchteam based out of the university of hohenheim
in germany published a study comparing thenutritional value of these ancient grains to the bread and durum wheats most peopleeat today. and it turns out that if we want to startproducing more of those older kinds of wheat, we’ll probably need to develop them a bit. hulled wheats are the ancestors of modernwheat, but there’s at least one big difference: the grains of hulled wheats are encased ina hard hull. that hull is made from glumes -- tough chaffthat protects the grains. it’s almost like the shell of a nut, but it’s also reallyhard to get off. modern bread and durum wheats, on the otherhand, are free-threshing wheats -- meaning,
when you harvest them, the grain separatesfrom all the un-useful stuff pretty easily. whereas the hulled spikelets of spelt, emmer,and einkorn need to be dried, heated, or milled before you can break open the hulls and getto the good stuff. so it’s not hard to see why we switched.hulled wheat is just more work. but those hulls also protect the grain fromfungus and diseases. and hulled wheat can grow in less hospitable climates, especiallycolder and less fertile mountain regions, where modern wheat can struggle. plus, if some wheat-destroying superdiseaseever wipes out all of our modern wheat crops, it would be nice to have a backup plan ortwo.
so, to get the best possible data on theseolder wheats compared to the newer ones, the team conducted field trials at four differentlocations in germany -- by growing 75 different varieties of wheat in each place. there were15 varieties for each of the five main types of wheat. maybe unsurprisingly, the wheat varietieswe use today outperformed their ancient counterparts in pretty much every way. grain yield, or“how much food we got out of each plot,†was significantly higher for modern wheats. the yield for spelt, emmer, and einkorn were37, 52, and 65% lower, respectively. the hulled wheats also grew about 30 centimeterstaller, which is not good.
taller wheat doesn’t mean more grain, becausethe grain only grows on the top. but taller wheat runs a much higher risk of breakingin a strong wind -- and the bent stalks are much more difficult to harvest. and that higher growth was after reducingthe amount of nitrogen-rich fertilizer given to the hulled wheats. nitrogen-rich fertilizerbeing what makes grass plants grow even taller. but how good is the grain they did get? quality of wheat grain is partly determinedby its protein content. nitrogen-rich fertilizers also improve theplants’ protein yields, so it’s hard to compare the ancient wheats with the modernwheats directly, since they didn’t receive
the same amounts. but even with less fertilizer, the ancientwheat actually contained more protein than our modern wheat. but not so fast, because not all protein iscreated equal. modern wheat has been bred to produce extremely high quality protein. the protein in the hulled wheats didn’tcontain nearly as much gluten, which is the stuff that gives you all that energy afterbiting off a hunk of bread. that said, alternative baking methods, andmore refined methods of farming, might improve the nutritional yield of hulled wheats.
so: are hulled wheats better than modern wheat?not really, but that isn’t too surprising. i mean, we switched to modern wheat for areason. but more options for delicious bread are nice,and it’s likely that we can get better grain results with more practice. selective breedingcould someday give us shorter plants with better protein and higher grain yields. so it’s probably worth developing theseancient grains so we can bring them back on a larger scale. if you love scishow and you want to sharethat love with those you love you might love scishow valentines which are available nowat dftba.com/scishow, and if you just want
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