Wheat

Where bread — and civilisation — began

Bread, pasta, samsa, biscuits — all made from wheat! Wheat is a plant whose grains are ground into flour. 10,000 years ago people learned to sow wheat — and gave up hunting to build cities. One ear of wheat holds 50 grains. Every day, 2 billion people eat wheat bread. Uzbek flatbread is made from wheat too!

Wheat (Triticum) was domesticated from wild ancestors 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent (today's Turkey, Syria, Iraq); the Neolithic revolution and the first cities (Jericho, Çatalhöyük) are linked to it. Bread wheat (T. aestivum) is a natural hybrid of 3 species with 6 sets of chromosomes (hexaploid), and its genome is 5 times larger than a human's. 800 million tonnes are grown a year — 20% of humanity's calories. Uzbekistan grows 7–8 million tonnes a year and is self-sufficient. Gluten is the protein that lets dough rise. The 'Green Revolution' of the 1960s (Norman Borlaug, dwarf wheat) tripled yields and cut famine — a Nobel Peace Prize. Leavened dough is an Egyptian invention 6,000 years old.

Fun facts

• The wheat genome is 5 times bigger than the human one!
• One grain grows into 50 grains in a single summer.
• Uzbek flatbread bakes in a tandoor in 3 minutes — a 5,000-year-old technology.