A major study co-authored by University of Manitoba Plant Science researcher Dr Harmeet Chawla is helping to reveal the evolution and origin of bread.

Members of the International Open Wild Wheat Consortium (OWWC) collaborated to analyse approximately 80,000varieties of early bread wheat to map the genome of their original wild grass ancestor.

Dr Chawla said the findings would help provide a better understanding of how modern-day bread wheat emerged and adapted to growing conditions around the world.

“…and also contribute to advancing research aimed at improving current wheat crops,” he said.

Bread wheat resulted from the inter-breeding of durum wheat and the wild grass Aegilops tauschii, and first emerged in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East between 8000 and 11,000 years ago.

The study revealed this initial hybridisation event took place around the banks of the southern Caspian Sea. This created a bottleneck, making the new bread wheat lineage distinct from its wild grass relatives. The adaptability of the new grain then allowed cultivation to spread rapidly across a wide range of climates and soils. Further hybridisation by farmers across the increasing agricultural region then led to improvements in gluten, producing the elastic and fluffy bread dough known today.

However, the research also said current grain yields may be insufficient to meet future bread wheat demands, which in turn is calling for concerted efforts to diversify and intensify wheat breeding to further raise yields.

Dr Chawla said in his research program he hoped to leverage genomics and genetic engineering to design climate change-resilient crops in aid of this.

“The open source data made available by the OWWC is helping us to identify genes that will protect wheat crops,” he said.

“We also hope to mine this wild grass species for climate-resilient genes that can be bred into elite wheat cultivars.”

The full research was published in the Nature journal.