Novum wheat, the threshable spelt (Part 1)
Agro-economic status report
The agriculture and food industry nowadays are struggling with many economic problems, and people who make living from it, are waiting for a change, which will turn the production back to the prosperous direction. The most important task is to shape up a grain production, stock-raising and alternate crop production, which is profitable and predictable for the farmers, safe, and orientate by the expectations and demands of the present age (Who determines it? Customers, common-sense, science, media, politics, corporate interests etc.?). Still…
The defencelessness of the agriculture has grown further despite the high purchase prices of the crop products. (15-40% price increase of inputs etc.). The global food trade has reached 70% increase between 2001-2007, while the production exceeded the previous quantity with only 15%! In the meantime, we, Hungarians were unable to manage our own grain surplus (we are far away from shipping routes and the first cost is high). So, the effect of the demand market (EU) did not show up until 2007. Therefore, we cannot build upon the current conditions, because the start-up trends (e.g. China) of the biofuels are seem to stuck.
In the world’s more developed regions, as well as in Hungary, the grain-based food industry works with a perception and set-up which is mainly unchanged for decades.
The most important of the agricultural goods is food, which is to satisfy the primary needs. This is why people can bear the shortage of healthy food only for a strictly restricted time. Demand satisfaction cannot be replaced with other consumer’s goods, with industrial goods or with any other entertaining services.
The intention for shaping the food production and supply was always a programme of generations and countries, and so it shall remain that way.
The preparation of the agricultural goods cannot be done by narrowing it to one or another, or some other places of the Earth (as some large countries with low population density think that in the WTO). It’s because most of the world-population still take part in production directly, and this doesn’t change, knowing that more and more technology drifting into the rural areas. (Present day, narrowing the production to some countries would generate the greatest migration of mankind!)
Club of Rome’s predictions from the 70’s for the Millennium, did not come true. The numbers of the hungry and the sufferers of malnutrition are keep growing, the condition of human environment is deteriorating, flora and fauna are ruining. Only the sins of the civil service or the laws themselves are responsible for the hungry; the volume of food is sufficient, the waste of the West is 40%, the distribution is more than wrong!
Free trade is necessary, until that point when the inhuman greed starts to abuse with it. (The soy import is dominated by GM-products, because on 65-70% of the world’s soybean areas genetically engineered species are in use.)
Wrong point of view that interests of science and scientific research should be considered as the same as common interests of the population or the agrarian community.
Most of these global tendencies which can be considered as negativities, are also making their effects felt in our local environment. Newer and newer conceptions to move ahead are appearing in vain if they don’t have the will to act in behind. There is no will to act because there is no specific data, fact, smashing economic innovation which could be attached to the desires, and which could be proven to be more practical and better than the well-known, so which could have big impact on the basics of the agriculture.
All of this means that, there wasn’t and there isn’t any published information about the idea that how could the recent activity of the Hungarian agriculture be more efficient (nice word?!) and essentially 15-30% cheaper. Can we reduce the costs of grain production by 20-30% and the stock-raising by 15-20%?
The innovation is not exactly an innovation, it’s actually ancient. As it was mentioned in my previous post: it is the novum wheat (Triticum speltivum), the threshable spelt.
It has evolved similarly as the soft, white paste-wheat of the Australians (ANW=Australian Noodle White), which overwhelmed entire Asia, and which got remarkably positive marketing tools associated to it. (The ANW has been created from the point mutations of the aestivum wheat, the novum comes from the macro- and point mutations of the spelt.)
Simply about the evolution of the wheats
To understand the evolution of the novum wheat, we need to review some ten thousand years. Archeological finds are proving equally that the homeland (gene center) of the wheat can be placed on the hunch of the Fertile Crescent. This area is trending from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea (South-West Turkey, northern regions of Lebanon and Syria) across the territories under the Taurus Mountains, bending South near the Lake Van towards the middle quadrant of the Tigris River. The einkorn wild wheats (monococcums) evolved here. These wheats have more species, so all of them contain other and other genetic material (genome).
According to relevant assumptions, firstly two species crossed, and the emmer (T. dicoccum) came into existence. The time passed, still no sign of human intervention.
The nature „realized” that the simple genome synthesis (A+B=AB) cannot result in a long-term subsistence, so it has invented the ploidization (which was unnamed back then), namely, it has multiplied the same genomes, and then it has merged them (AA+BB=AABB). The result of this was the real wild emmer. Ten thousands of years passed, and a third einkorn wheat has stepped into the crossings which carried the D genome. This has ploidized too, and then it has crossed with the emmer so the group of the hexaploid speltoides came into existence (AABBDD). Per the laws of the evolution-genetics, the spelt species was the first representative of the group.
The wild emmer and the spelt remained viable severally, this is why they were in the Stone Age man’s regimen. There are older finds (B.C. 10-12 thousand years) about the using of the spelt (hulled wheat), than the emmer. It’s because the emmer has already become the plant of the more arid climate (less inhabited areas). The wild emmer became a raised dicoccum with human help. Present day’s durum also comes from this dicoccum.
The Neolithic man undertook to the raising of the spelt in the same time when the settlements happened (until then he was just collecting and consuming it). After few thousand years, he noticed the inner mutations in the spelt (these mutations are always existed in the living nature), especially the threshable forms (in his case, which are easy to crumble by hand).
Findings from B.C. 6-8000 are already verifying that the chaffed and naked wheat both were in the then lived man’s regimen. As he could get along easier with the threshable forms, he preferred them more and more. In the rougher and more undemanding environment he propagated the spelt.
In Europe the ice cover started to fall back to the north, so the growing population was forced to move to newer places. They took the wheats with them (and the barley too). Where they settled down, there the wheats adapted – which were able to – to the new environment, and this is how the region-styled variants have been developed to the Ancient history.
But the Neolithic man was able to select only those mutated spelt forms which were became easy to thresh that time.
So today’s common wheat is nothing else but a spin-off of some spelt-forms which were mutated and become threshable in the ancient times and which were spread and crossed with also each other during thousands of years.
If in the meantime there were - actually there were - newer mutations between the spelt, those were ignored by the subsequent generations, because they have raised much more threshable variants by then. The spelt form descending dominantly and the mutations can only be noticed with proper observation and searching. Spelt do not split out from the threshables.
To the modern age (when science started to revive), due to the difficult handling methods, the raising of the spelt has been strongly fallen back. Who could have noticed these changes?
The specifications of the wheat variants, which were developed to the Ancient history, were still good enough (supposed to 13-16% crude protein) until the middle of the modern age (1800’s); the quote, to live on „bread and water” comes from here (they used only whole-wheat flour of course).
Those region-styled variations which lived through 3-5000 years, were progressively facing new, also human challenges (population explosion, demand for mechanization, fungus diseases etc.). So, at the end of the 19th century, a change had to be made.
The scientific world forgot the ancient lines, and by the appeared Mendel-theories they reached out towards the crossings; namely, they mixed the genotypes of the aestivum, which was adaptive in more continents. This activity was the most successful in the US and in Canada, so, still they have that common wheat which is internationally certified as the best in specification and in hardness.
Globally, in range of the spiked grain-breeding, the newer and newer varieties are still coming from the combinations of some dozen varieties which have been developed at the end of the 19th century.
Since then the genetic background did not flare but reduced! Genetically over-raised, the ecological adaptability has ceased. It follows that wheat growing in the EU only profitable if the plant gets everything it needs (sometimes it’s still not). So the wheat is incapable of living by itself. Consequence: specification and quantity are changing incomprehensibly in different years; it can become profitable only if the subventions of growing, and others are getting attached to it.
Wheat growing paradigm of our recent past and present day
In the western world (Europe, North-America), the development of the wheats is being effected by three climates:
continental,
atlantic,
cold continental.
The continental is referred to the Carpathian Basin, the East European Plain and middle USA.
The atlantic is extending to Western Europe, and a little east to the Appalache (though, there is no more wheat growing there).
The cold continental territories are covering East-South-West Canada, northern states of the US, and the middle zone of Russia’s European parts.
The American wheat growing is differing from the European substantially. Its principle: 3-3,5 t/ha average yield is enough, quality must be perfect (actually it is), less input so the cost of production is 25-30% cheaper than the Hungarian. The variety rotation is much slower and they using much less varieties than the Europeans. The protein content of the wheats is between 13-15,5%, the wet gluten content 32-38%, and most of them are hard spring. Self-sufficiency and export orientation. Currently the best commercial wheat class in the world is the CWES (Canada Western Extra Strong Red Spring).
The European wheat growing has three wings:
Western European – bushy vegetation; lot of fertilizer and pesticide; frequent variety shift, it follows the expensive production, high average yield (6-8 t/ha) and low quality (10-11% protein content which is hardly good for forage, and mostly hard kernel). This is why the forage base needs the 80% transgenic soy, maize gluten, argentine sunflower meal, distillers grains (DDGS), all from overseas. Import orientation.
Hungarian – bushy vegetation is essential too; quite a lot fertilizer and pesticide; unreasonable cultivation; wrong crop rotation; frequent variety shift; lots of varieties → the production is quite expensive, fluctuating average yield (3-5 t/ha), good, mid-low quality (11,5-14% protein content) depending on the year not on the varieties. Self-sufficiency and export orientation.
Balkanian, Eastern-European – mid-bushy, mixed vegetation, little use of fertilizer and pesticide, quite slow variety rotation, relatively few varieties, cheap production and low average yield (1,5-2,50 t/ha), undemanding economic level, good-average quality. Essentially self-sufficiency, export or import depending on the year.
It is definable, that the paradigms are not alike, due to the incomplete knowledge in wheats. Hungary is trying to follow the Western European way (namely it would practice „intensive” farming), but cannot eliminate the more thickening extreme weather effects with the current exercise.
This unbalanced and unreliable yield level together with the hectic price relations is responsible for the downfall of the domestic stock-raising.
Following the right farming exercise and per rules of the value added, the forage should be sold as animal product. This means that the farmer should feed the forage with his own animals and then sell only the animal or the product comes from the animal.
We have forgotten that spiked grains are the base of the human and animal nutrition. We are focusing only on the demands of the milling and baking industry, where the production of healthy food is not a priority anymore at all (lot of additives and the quantity of chemicals used during the production can prove that). Nowadays wheat can be qualified as forage wheat if the wet gluten goes under 26% which means its protein content is around 11%. Those who know the basics of the forage also know that the lowest protein demand is around 15%. So, for the stock-raising, soft wheats with high protein content are required, not the 80% transgenic soy.
After analyzing the table I presented in 'Thousand faces of the wheat, Part 2', we can declare, that testing the newer and newer varieties in public growing, and the narrowing of variety change to 8-12 years, is clearly not for to satisfy the quality, the customer needs and the healthy food (whatever it is communicated), but they are the frequent mistakes of the overdriven market-acquiring struggle and the not always rational marketing activity. They still cannot tolerate the climate anomalies.
The more intensive the chemical use is, the weaker the physiological effect of the product is. The efficiency of the crude protein transformation decreased from 74-75% to 55-65%. In case of the environmentally sound novum, this number is between 90-94%.
Beyond satisfying the food and forage related demands, problems of energy-supply came to the front which just sharpened the state. Within the aestivum not even variety candidates are available for stock-raising and industry. This is why we see re-pricing regarding agricultural goods, valorization regarding the future of renewable energy, and this is why a much greater raw material-competition is in development between the energetic goods and food related agricultural goods.
To be continued...
