Bread Wheat

Bread wheat grows best in full sun and tolerates a wide range of soil textures, from sand to clay, provided the ground is well-drained and not prone to flooding; moderately fertile soil gives the best results. It is propagated from seed, grows rapidly, and needs little maintenance once established, with home gardeners typically sowing it in fall for use as a winter cover crop.

Because wheat does not fix nitrogen the way legumes do, its value to soil comes instead from the root and top growth it produces; turning this growth back into the ground raises the soil's organic matter content.

Bread wheat is susceptible to southern root knot nematode, though it does not host certain other nematode species, which is why it can be a useful rotation crop where those pests are a problem. Where Hessian fly is present in the area, sowing is best delayed until after the first fall frost to avoid infestation.

Culinary: Bread wheat is grown chiefly as a grain crop whose cooked grain is a staple food; it is cultivated on more acreage than any other crop, underpinning its central place in baking and cooking worldwide.

Cover crop and forage: Bread wheat is also grown as a cover crop and for forage. Sown for these purposes it suppresses and outcompetes weeds through its rapid growth, helps prevent soil erosion, and adds organic matter to the ground when its top growth is incorporated back into the soil.

Bread wheat originated roughly 8,000 years ago through the hybridization of an already domesticated free-threshing wheat with the wild goatgrass Aegilops tauschii, in the South Caucasus or southwestern Caspian region, an origin consistent with records placing its domestication in the area stretching from Turkey and Iran through to India. From there it spread into North Africa, Europe, and East Asia in prehistoric times, with naked wheats appearing among Roman burial goods dated to between 100 BCE and 300 CE. It reached North America with Spanish missions in the sixteenth century, though the continent's later role as a major grain exporter dates from the settlement of the prairies in the 1870s.