The cultivated variety that Vavilov described near the village of Hawran is still grown to some extent, as are a few varieties such as Salamouni, which is ideally suited for making bulgur, a cracked cereal used in tabbouleh. [1] However, while the locally adapted varieties suited to bulgur and another traditional dish, kishk, have persisted in Lebanon, bread wheats had largely been lost in the decades just prior to Vavilov’s visit, when the Lebanese began to import their flour from Syria and Africa.
Extracted from Where our Food Comes From by Gary Paul Nabhan
and used with permission.
- Someone should perhaps talk to Slow Food Beirut about wheat taxonomy. [↩]
