Bread Dough and its Place in the Rise of Civilization
August 21, 2024 | 1 min to read
Bread has been pivotal in shaping human civilization, providing essential calories that fueled early populations. A groundbreaking study reveals the reasons behind bread wheat's prominence, distinguishing it as one of the most successful crops despite others fading away. Professor Brande Wulff from KAUST emphasizes that this research illuminates a key agricultural shift that enabled humans to settle and build societies, marking a significant milestone in our history.
Bread shaped human civilization. It provided the delicious doughy calories that energised the populations of some of the first ancient cities. Ten thousand years later this iconic crop helps to sustain a global population of eight billion.
A remarkable new study has provided compelling evidence as to how it was made possible, revealing the secret that made bread wheat one of the most successful crops on the planet while many others have disappeared or remained in local obscurity.
“Our findings shed new light on an iconic event in our civilisation that created a new kind of agriculture and allowed humans to settle down and form societies,” said Professor Brande Wulff, a wheat researcher at KAUST (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) and one of the lead authors of the study which appears in Nature.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: The Open Wild Wheat Consortium