Taxonomy of wheat

During 10,000 years of cultivation, numerous forms of wheat have evolved under human selection. This diversity has led to much confusion in the naming of wheats. This article explains how genetic and morphological characteristics of wheat influence its classification, and gives the most common botanical names of wheat in current use (see Table of wheat species). Information on the cultivation and uses of wheat is at the main wheat page.

The genus Triticum includes the wild and domesticated species usually thought of as wheat.

In the 1950s growing awareness of the genetic similarity of the wild goatgrasses (Aegilops) led some botanists to amalgamate Aegilops and Triticum as one genus, Triticum. This approach is still followed by some (mainly geneticists), but has not been widely adopted by taxonomists. Aegilops is morphologically highly distinct from Triticum, with rounded rather than keeled glumes.

Aegilops is important in wheat evolution because of its role in two important hybridisation events. Wild emmer (T. dicoccoides and T. araraticum) resulted from the hybridisation of a wild wheat, T. urartu, and an as yet unidentified goatgrass, probably similar to Ae. speltoides. Hexaploid wheats (e.g. T. aestivum and T. spelta) are the result of a hybridisation between a domesticated tetraploid wheat, probably T. dicoccum or T. durum, and another goatgrass, Ae. tauschii (also known as Ae. squarrosa).

Botanists of the classical period, such as Columella, and in sixteenth and seventeenth century herbals, divided wheats into two groups, Triticum corresponding to free-threshing wheats, and Zea corresponding to hulled ('spelt') wheats.

Carl Linnaeus recognised five species, all domesticated:

Later classifications added to the number of species described, but continued to give species status to relatively minor variants, such as winter vs. spring forms. The wild wheats were not described until the mid-19th century because of the poor state of botanical exploration in the Near East, where they grow.

The development of a modern classification depended on the discovery, in the 1920s, that wheat was divided into 3 ploidy levels.

As with many grasses, polyploidy is common in wheat. Some wheats are not polyploid. There are two wild diploid wheats, T. boeoticum and T. urartu. T. boeoticum is the wild ancestor of domesticated einkorn, T. monococcum. Cells of the diploid wheats each contain 2 complements of 7 chromosomes, one from the mother and one from the father (2n=2x=14, where 2n is the number of chromosomes in each somatic cell, and x is the basic chromosome number).

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