Comment by ahartmetz
12 hours ago
It seems like the genes that cause long stalks also have other benefits, otherwise they'd have been bred out a long time ago. At least that is what I figure.
12 hours ago
It seems like the genes that cause long stalks also have other benefits, otherwise they'd have been bred out a long time ago. At least that is what I figure.
Short grains are modern;
- allow modern machines to harvest it more easily
- move slighly more of the plants energy into the seed
- prevent wind damage. (small farms bordered with trees was more typical historically)
On the historical side;
- The long stalks allow the crop to be bundled and dried without the seed touching the ground.
- It makes the stalks themselves useful as a building material in walls, roofs, isolation, bedding.
- It makes for a good grip as the seeds are pulled form the stalks with an historical thresher.
In short, we didn't start breeding grains to be short until modern post industrial farming techniques. Short grain does provide better yield on industrial mono-crop farming. But would have been seen as worse historically.
Problem with modern grains 1) gluten 2) weed killers/ pesticides 3) lack of nutritional value
My father and many other people in my family increased to neutral millets and started giving up wheat as much as they can.
Those problems are worth solving for or roll back to grossini seeds and use his creative technique to not let it withered by wind and let’s you have better nutritional value
Old grains still have plenty of gluten, and aren't immune to weeds or pests and have more or less the same nutritional value.
Did older grains have more gluten? I might try to search them out just for that reason.
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Lodging is still a big problem even with modern varieties and growth regulators and even pre-modern wheat plants were probably shorter than they were originally.
They confer advantage over many weeds according to the article.