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What is so weird about the genetics of wheat?

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The cultivation of wheat (Triticum monococcum) began about 10,000 years ago in the "Fertile Crescent" of the eastern Mediterranean. This wheat was called einkorn and it was a good choice for cultivation. Ecologically speaking, it is a pioneer plant; a weed with 14 chromosomes. It grew easily on any open, disturbed ground and tolerated drought. More importantly, it had a relatively large seed (grain) that could be dried and stored—a stable
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Emmer wheat used in ancient Egyptian bread-making
Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic
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food source.

Shortly after we began cultivating wheat, it did a strange thing. Wheat doubled its chromosome count to 28, becoming a new species. Emmer (Triticum turgidum) was a more robust plant with larger seed heads. But some Stone Age person was smart enough to recognize this improved variety and began cultivating it.

Then wheat did something even weirder, it added another set of chromosomes, bringing the count up to 42. This wheat (Triticum aestivum) is a polyploid, a plant with three sets of chromosomes. This is our modern bread wheat. But we still continue to cultivate the 28-chromosome wheat, durum. Durum is grown because of the agglutinating properties of its proteins, absolutely necessary for good pasta.

It's believed that wild wheats may spontaneously hybridize every now and then without undergoing meiosis, the division of chromosomes where half of the genetics is inherited from the mother and half from the father. Or perhaps, wheat crossed itself with a wild relative that has since gone extinct.

The Department of Archaeology and Archaeological Science at the University of Sheffield has an excellent article about the early wheats by Adrian Chadwick. To learn more about wheat cultivation in the British Isles, click on the link:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/assem/2/2chad.html