February
1927
I made a first-class discovery between Gonder and Aksum. In a field I found a peculiar awnless hard wheat, previously unknown. For decades, plant breeders from different countries have tried to produce awnless hard wheat by crossing ordinary awned hard wheat with soft awnless wheat. The creation of such a wheat is extremely difficult because of the great genetic distance between hard and soft wheat. However, in Abyssinia, nature herself had created an awnless hard wheat, analog to such a kind of soft wheat. The grain was still not harvested. I collected thousands of ears. From both a practical and a theoretical point of view, this was, indeed, the most interesting find during all time spent travelling in Abyssinia.
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I suspect he refers to durum wheat, often known as hard wheat. I suggest that the genebanks be searched for awnless Ethiopian durum wheats collected by NIV, which are quite rare, then try to determine if any of them had been used in wheat breeding. good luck!