Evaluate and re-establish old wheat species

Wheat is a large family with numerous subspecies, but today mainly bread wheat (Triticum aestivum ssp. aestivum) and durum wheat (Tricticum turgidum ssp. durum) were used in the world. However, other wheat subspecies have historically been intensively used. Einkorn (Triticum monococcum) and Emmer (Triticum turgidum ssp. dicoccum) belong to the founder crops of modern agriculture in the Fertile Crescent more than 10.000 years ago. While Einkorn lost rapidly its importance, Emmer was the main cereal crop of Egypt at the age of the famous pharao’s. Spelt (Triticum aestivum ssp. spelta) appeared later but was the main cereal crop of the Alemannians in the 12th up to the 19th century in Southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

More than 30 years ago, we started to investigate the potential of the wheat subspecies Spelt together with farmers, millers and bakers. Large number of gene bank accessions have been investigated in intensive field trials across several field locations and years (Kling et al. 2009). It was rapidly clear that Spelt would be interesting for regional agriculture in the “Alemannian’s” regions, but only with its adaptation to modern agriculture. This was mainly an increased harvest index, i.e. reduction of plant height coupled with an increase in grain yield. Although using bread wheat as donator for the dwarfing gene, intensive backcrossing programs with very different old Spelt landraces warrant that today’s Spelt varieties brought a unique forgotten diversity back to the field.

Today, Spelt is grown on more than 100.000 ha worldwide with a steady increase of 10% per year. This success was not only due to its adaptation to modern agriculture, but to the integration of the whole product chain from the beginning in the re-establishment process. Together with important stakeholders from agriculture, mills, and bakery, milestone questions were defined, answered and necessary information put into the market to re-launch the crop. While in past times this communication and networking was done mainly by field days and holding many talks, we additionally try to use modern media for today’s communication (Facebook).

Since more than 10 years, we further evaluate the potential to re-establish Emmer and Einkorn. We therefore performed intensive field trials to elaborate knowledge on best farming, gluten composition as well as ingredients. Since few years, cultivation of Einkorn and Emmer is steadily increasing showing once again the success of this strategy – use of genetic resources by cropping and processing them to superior end-products.

For all these crops we follow the same approach: acquire hundreds of varieties within each crop from genebanks, multiply them and put them into intensive field & lab tests. Based on these results, we start our breeding work and communication to the supply chain and consumers.

For details, read the pages of Spelt, Emmer & Einkorn.