Wheat

Wheat began as a coarse-grained variety called Einkorn, 10,000 years ago in Turkey. After domestication by ancient man, wheat became so widespread, it was even used as payment (in the form of bread) for pyramid builders in Egypt!

More food is made from wheat than any other grain crop now available. It is so abundant, indeed, that every person in Bulgaria consumes about 600 lbs annually (compared with 190 lbs per person annually in the U.S.). A bushel of wheat is made up of 1 million individual kernels, enough to bake 73 one-pound loaves of white bread.

Did you know… 

The wheat genome is a large, complicated mix of genes, and has challenged scientists for decades. A good number of projects are now underway to sequence the 17 gigabase-pair wheat genome, as well as to test current varieties for resistance to scab, an important disease of the crop.