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Concept
Emmer
Summary
Emmer wheat or hulled wheat is a type of awned wheat. Emmer is a tetraploid (4n = 4x = 28 chromosomes). The domesticated types are Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccum and T. t. conv. durum. The wild plant is called T. t. subsp. dicoccoides. The principal difference between the wild and the domestic forms is that the ripened seed head of the wild plant shatters and scatters the seed onto the ground, while in the domesticated emmer, the seed head remains intact, thus making it easier for humans to harvest the grain.
Along with einkorn wheat, emmer was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East. It was widely cultivated in the ancient world, but is now a relict crop in mountainous regions of Europe and Asia.
Emmer is considered a type of farro food, especially in Italy.
Strong similarities in morphology and genetics show that wild emmer (T. dicoccoides Koern.) is the wild ancestor and a crop wild relative of domesticated emmer. Because wild and domesticated emmer are interfertile with other tetraploid wheats, some taxonomists consider all tetraploid wheats to belong to one species, T. turgidum. Under this scheme, the two forms are recognized at subspecies level, thus T. t. subsp. dicoccoides and T. t. subsp. dicoccum. Either naming system is equally valid; the latter lays more emphasis on genetic similarities.
For a wider discussion, see and Wheat taxonomy
Wild emmer grows wild in the Near East. It is a tetraploid wheat formed by the hybridization of two diploid wild grasses, Triticum urartu, closely related to wild einkorn (T. boeoticum), and an as yet unidentified Aegilops species related to A. searsii or A. speltoides.
Botanists Körnicke and Aaronsohn in the late 19th-century were the first to describe the wild emmer (Triticum dicoccoides) native to Palestine and adjacent countries. Earlier, in 1864, the Austrian botanist Kotschy had collected specimens of the same wild emmer, without signifying where he had collected them.
Official source
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