The source of Khoranka wheat

1926

The very first excursions to Arabian villages revealed fields which displayed wheats of a peculiar composition. Here I collected for the first time the basic subspecies which I later named the ‘Khoranka’. ^[1] This is a remarkable, large-grained, hard wheat with stiff straw and highly productive, compact ears. At present ^[2] the Khoranka has already been introduced on to tens of thousands of hectares of cropland in the highlands of Azerbaidjan. And right here, on the slopes and at the edges of the fields I saw for the first time stands of the wild wheat.

The entire problem is linked to the 1906 discovery by the botanist Aaronsohn of a wild wheat in Syria and Palestine. With exaggerations typical of an investigator of the East, he proclaimed in a flight of fancy a new era for the breeding of wheat. The wild wheat, distributed in semidesert areas, definitely drought tolerant and with comparatively large grains, was represented by Aaronsohn as a wonderful material for improving cultivated wheat and for raising its drought resistance. The modest requirements of the wild wheat (able to grow among stones on waste land) indicated that new opportunities had been opened up. No less enthusiastically, a representative of the US Department of Agriculture, Dr Cook, who in 1913 made a special trip to Syria and Palestine for studies of the wild wheat, also ascribed excessive importance to it. Wild wheat was sent to the USA in the form of ears in a great number of boxes.

Unfortunately we arrived at the site where the wild wheat occurs when the ears to a great extent had fallen off. It was only with difficulty that we could locate them by clearing away the stones, although they had fallen to the ground in large quantities. The drought tolerance and straw-stiffness of the wild wheat proved, however, to be considerably exaggerated. Detailed investigations showed that the wild wheat grew among the stones in soft, fertilized soil, retaining water. In this respect it is little different from cultivated wheat. It became necessary to make severe corrections of the exaggerated statements made by Aaronsohn and Cook. ^[3] Furthermore, the Syrian subspecies of wild wheat actually turned out to be small-grained and its ears were not very large either. No doubt the drought resistance of the locally cultivated wheat, widely grown by the Arabian settlers, was of much more interest and of course we concentrated our attention on it.

The wild species of wheat (Triticum dicoccoides [Koern.] Aarons.) was naturally of interest as an evolutionary link. Subsequently, however, when studying the wild wheat and experimenting with attempts at hybridization, we encountered still more drawbacks for its utilization for practical purposes. But, the exaggerations of Aaronsohn ^[4] had one positive effect: the generous Americans built up a special research station near Haifa, where great work on breeding field crops is done.

Notes:

1. Usually called Triticum durum subsp. horanicum. [↩]
2. That is, when he was writing up his field notes, some time after the discovery. [↩]
3. Some of those claims can be read in contemporary accounts from 1912 and 1913. Were they exaggerated? The wild relatives have proved useful in breeding and research. [↩]
4. Vavilov does seem to have it in for Aaronsohn; I am not expert enough to judge the comments, but it would be interesting to examine their interactions. Aronsohn is, in any case, a fascinating character, in his way as interesting as Vavilov. [↩]

Tagged as: Wheat