THE SYNTHETIC PRODUCTION 



OF WILD WHEAT FORMS' 



H. H. Love and W. T. Craig^ 



The rediscovery of wild wheat or 

 wild emmer in Palestine by Aaron 

 Aaronsohn^ is of great interest to those 

 investigators who are concerning them- 

 selves with work in cereals, particu- 

 larly with wheat. It also is of general 

 interest, since any evidence that may be 

 produced to connect domestic varieties 

 with their wild prototypes is always of 

 interest. 



Kornicke found in the National Mu- 

 seum of Vienna some Hordeum spon- 

 taneum which Kotschy had gathered at 

 Rasheyya, Palestine, on the northwest- 

 ern side of Mount Hermon about 1855. 

 Among the stems of this material was 

 part of an ear which Kornicke consid- 

 ered to be wild wheat and later named 

 it Triticum vulgar e dicoccoides and de- 

 clared it to be the prototype of the cul- 

 tivated wheats. 



No further information was obtained, 

 and no more material of this wild type 

 was found until Aaronsohn in 1906 

 found a plant at Rosh Pinar in Pales- 

 tine. Later in the same year near 

 Rasheyya, Palestine, he found many 

 plants of wild wheat in the uncultivated 

 fields. He found a great diversity of 

 forms such as black-glumed types, 

 pubescent forms and other variations. 

 No forms were found which Aaronsohn 

 believed were hybrids between the wild 

 type and the cultivated forms. This 

 wild type came to be named Triticum 

 dicoccum dicoccoides, but Cook* has 

 suggested the name Triticum hermonis, 

 due to its being found on and near 

 Mount Hermon. 



The wild wheat was usually asso- 

 ciated with wild barley and was found 

 in other places in Palestine by Aaron- 

 sohn on other botanical explorations. 

 Aaronsohn stated that this wild form 

 is either the prototype of cultivated 

 wheats or one of the oldest forms de- 

 rived from such a prototype. 



During 1910, Cook, in connection 

 with an investigation of cotton culture 

 in Egypt, visited the wild wheat coun- 

 try in Palestine. The results of this 

 inspection have been fully described.* 

 Cook gives a very complete description 

 of this wild form and a number of its 

 variations as found in Palestine, as well 

 as its adaptation to cross fertilization. 



In regard to this being the wild pro- 

 totype Cook says : "Though there is no 

 reason for any further doubt of the ex- 

 istence of a wild type of M^heat in Pal- 

 estine, equal certainty cannot be claimed 

 for the idea that the Palestine wild 

 wheat is the ancester or true prototype 

 of the domesticated types of wheat. It 

 is still doubtful whether all the culti- 

 vated types of wheat arose from a sin- 

 gle wild species or from different 

 species. Though the wild wheat of Pal- 

 estine possesses all the characters that 

 the European specialists expected to 

 find in the primitive ancestor or proto- 

 type of the domestic wheat, these char- 

 acters might also be expected to occur 

 in any wild relative of the wheat plant 

 and do not afford ground for a final 

 conclusion regarding the relationships 

 that exist between the wild wheat of 

 Palestine and the domesticated cereals." 



'Paper No. 75 of the Department of Plant Breeding, Cornell University. Ithaca, N. Y. 



'In cooperation with the Office of Cereal Investigations, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



'Aaronsohn, Aaron : "Agricultural and Botanical Explorations in Palestine. U. S. De- 

 partment of Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry Bull. 180 (1910). 



*Cook, O. F. : "Wild Wheat in Palestine." U. S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of 

 Plant Industry Bull. 274 (1913). 



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