Wheat is one of the most widely produced cereals, the world’s wheat growing areas range in the northern hemisphere regions often due to climatic conditions, China tops the list of ten wheat producing countries, with its production in the 2019/2020 season of about 133.590 million metric tons of wheat, followed by India, Russia and the USA, and we will review
Do you know about wheat
More than 17,000 years ago humans collected and ate the seeds of the wheat plant, rubbed the husks and ate the grains either raw, dried or stewed.
Civilizations in the ancient cities of Babylon, Egypt and Rome first cultivated wheat, then oats and barley, and then moved to Western and Northern Europe.
The oldest wheat species discovered by humans was not one whose shell could be separated from the grain, so the ancient man chipped the grain, and scientists distinguished about 14 wheat species that were classified into three main types according to the number of chromosomes present in their cells.
Since the eighteenth century, wheat used in white bread, pastries and Pizza has been the main grain crop around the world, and during the twentieth century, especially with the advent of Mendel’s laws of inheritance, many changes and improvements were made in wheat cultivation around the world.
The first English colonists who arrived in the American colonies transported the wheat crop with them to the American continent, and it soon became the main cash crop there where they sold it to other city dwellers and exporters, and in colonial times wheat cultivation became concentrated in the Central American colonies known as the”bread colonies”.
Wheat is measured on a bushel scale, an international grain kiln equivalent to 27 kg, a bushel of wheat produces about 42 pounds of white flour or 6 pounds of whole wheat flour, and a bushel produces about 42 loaves of white bread weighing one and a half pounds or 90 whole wheat loaves weighing 1 pound.
Single wheat pints make about 42 pounds of pasta, and there are currently more than 600 forms of pasta manufactured around the world, durum wheat is considered the best type of pasta industry.
The nutritional value of wheat varies depending on the climate and the soil in which it is grown. :
12% water
And 70% carbs.
12% protein
2% fat
1.8% metals
2.2% fiber
Wheat also contains an amount of vitamin A, riboflavin, niacin and thiamine, but in small amounts, and the grinding process removes most of those nutrients.
Wheat cultivation
The wheat plant has long, thin, hollow leaves and stems in most varieties, and inflorescences consist of varying numbers of Fine Flowers, ranging from 20 to 100.
Flowers are carried in groups of two to six in structures known as spines, which later serve to house the next two or three granules produced by the flowers.
Although wheat grows in a wide range of climates and soils, but it consists better with the temperate regions with rainfall between 30 and 90 cm (12 and 36 inches).
Wheat is grown twice a year and winter and spring wheat are the two main crop types, the severity of the winter determines whether the winter or spring type will be sown, winter wheat is always sown in the fall, and spring wheat is generally sown in the spring but can be sown in the fall in areas where winter is mild.
Wheat growing method
Wheat needs sufficiently fertile soil containing a sufficient amount of humus, and chemical fertilizers should be used when growing wheat.
Wheat is suitable for cultivation on a large scale of soil and in many regions of the world, the grains selected for cultivation must be purified so that they are as free of any foreign seeds as possible, and those seeds are often treated with fungicides to prevent disease transmission of the crop.
Winter varieties of wheat produce a better crop but require better climatic conditions as it requires that wheat develop a root system and begin to form new shoots before the weather becomes cold, but winter wheat develops more lateral or axillary shoots in the spike than spring varieties.
The sowing rate of wheat is about 22.5 kg per hectare, the sowing depth is usually between 2.5 to 7.5 cm and can be reduced in some areas.
The wheat plant is self-fertilized, and the pollen in wheat is transferred between the Mesum and the ovary in the same flower, which allows the varieties to reproduce properly, but some farmers may resort to transferring stamens from some plants to the flowers of other plants before the process of self-fertilization, in order to develop new varieties of wheat in order to obtain varieties resistant to rust or other diseases, drought resistance or other, but the stages of growth of wheat enriched in that way and the production of large quantities of it take more time and cost than normal fertilization.
Mechanized equipment is currently used to plow soil before planting wheat, but in some poor areas of the world and in small areas animal-drawn plows are still used to process the soil before planting wheat.
Diseases affecting the wheat plant
The most important diseases affecting wheat is rust, which includes a group of fungi the worst of which is the black rust fungus, this disease causes the green color of the grains to turn yellow and the grains become small and shrunken and the productivity of the acre, so it is preferable to root any herbs close to the wheat fields to prevent the
Ergot fungus is also a fungus that attacks wheat although it is not common, and forms a dark purple mass on the grains, and these fungi have a medicinal effect on humans and animals, so most of them must be removed in the mills before processing wheat.
Wheat harvesting
When harvesting wheat, the crop should not be wet; if it is more than 14% moist, it is dried after harvesting under special conditions to ensure that the gluten in the wheat is not damaged.
Types of wheat and its derivatives
Although wheat and its derivatives are diverse, there are currently only six main types of wheat grown for economic benefit: HRW hard red winter wheat, hrs hard red spring wheat, SRW hard white wheat, HW hard white wheat, SW hard wheat and durum hard wheat.
It is the most important types of flour:
Flour is versatile: it consists of 80% hard red wheat and 20% soft red wheat.
Bread flour: it is made from hard red spring wheat varieties, where it contains the highest level of protein and is only grinded endosperm, so it has little nutritional value so it often undergoes bleaching and nutrient reinforcement processes.
Cake flour: it is made from soft white wheat suida.
Self-lifting flour: a mixture of versatile flour, baking powder and salt.
Wheat used for food needs to be processed, where the grains are cleaned and then adapted by adding water so that their cores disintegrate properly, during the grinding process the grains are crushed and then passed through a series of rollers, the grains are sifted to bring out the coarse particles to other rollers to be grinded again, and eventually 75% of the
The flour that is made from complete grain called flour, Graham or whole wheat flour which does not accept storage for a long time because it contains a high percentage of the oil, germ, while white flour does not contain the germ so it can be preserved longer than whole wheat flour.
Poor wheat or surplus from various secondary grinding processes is used as livestock feed.
The bulk of the wheat flour produced annually is used in the baking industry, and is usually made from hard wheat because it contains 11-15% protein and gluten is strong and flexible.
