wild wheat

Wheat grains from the Iron Age, Timna, excavations by Prof. Erez Ben Yosef, Tel Aviv University. Photo: Laboratory of Archaeological Botany, Bar Ilan University.

DNA from 6,000-year-old wheat grains places the Land of Israel at the heart of the beginnings of agriculture

A multidisciplinary Israeli-Canadian study published in Nature Plants shows that the domestication of wheat was not a one-time event, but a long, multi-stage process, in which wild wheat from the southern Levant played a central role.
The results of the study show that the gene found in the Sharon wheatgrass gives the plant immunity against a wide variety of variants of the cane weevil. Photo: Dave Hansen

Will one Israeli plant save the world from starvation?

A new study found that genes from an Israeli wild plant may help protect wheat from one of the biggest threats to its existence