Wheat is a member of the grass family, and if you like bread, cake, or crackers -- at
least, the kind with wheat in them -- then you’re already a fan.
We use about 550 million metric tons of the stuff a year.
And these days, farmers and researchers are noticing a rising demand for the return of
different kinds of wheat -- partly because specialty foods are becoming more popular,
but also because they’d make our crops more diverse.
Specifically, people are interested in hulled wheat, 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 research team based out of the University of Hohenheim
in Germany published a study comparing the nutritional value of these ancient grains
to the bread and durum wheats most people eat today.
And it turns out that if we want to start producing more of those older kinds of wheat,
we’ll probably need to develop them a bit.
Hulled wheats are the ancestors of modern wheat, but there’s at least one big difference:
the grains of hulled wheats are encased in a hard hull.
That hull is made from glumes -- tough chaff that protects the grains.
It’s almost like the shell of a nut, but it’s also really hard to get off.
Modern bread and durum wheats, on the other hand, are free-threshing wheats -- meaning,
when you harvest them, the grain separates from 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 get to 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 from fungus and diseases.
And hulled wheat can grow in less hospitable climates, especially colder and less fertile
mountain regions, where modern wheat can struggle.
Plus, if some wheat-destroying superdisease ever wipes out all of our modern wheat crops,
it would be nice to have a backup plan or two.
So, to get the best possible data on these older wheats compared to the newer ones, the
team conducted field trials at four different locations in Germany -- by growing 75 different
varieties of wheat in each place.
There were 15 varieties for each of the five main types of wheat.
Maybe unsurprisingly, the wheat varieties we 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 were 37, 52, and 65% lower, respectively.
The hulled wheats also grew about 30 centimeters taller, which is not good.
Taller wheat doesn’t mean more grain, because the grain only grows on the top.
But taller wheat runs a much higher risk of breaking in a strong wind -- and the bent
stalks are much more difficult to harvest.
And that higher growth was after reducing the amount of nitrogen-rich fertilizer given
to the hulled wheats.
Nitrogen-rich fertilizer being what makes grass plants grow even taller.
But how good is the grain they did get?
Quality of wheat grain is partly determined by its protein content.
Nitrogen-rich fertilizers also improve the plants’ protein yields, so it’s hard to
compare the ancient wheats with the modern wheats directly, since they didn’t receive
the same amounts.
But even with less fertilizer, the ancient wheat actually contained more protein than
our modern wheat.
But not so fast, because not all protein is created equal.
Modern wheat has been bred to produce extremely high quality protein.
The protein in the hulled wheats didn’t contain nearly as much gluten, which is the
stuff that gives you all that energy after biting off a hunk of bread.
That said, alternative baking methods, and more 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 a reason.
But more options for delicious bread are nice, and it’s likely that we can get better grain
results with more practice.
Selective breeding could someday give us shorter plants with better protein and higher grain
yields.
So it’s probably worth developing these ancient grains so we can bring them back on
a larger scale.
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