Comment by aDyslecticCrow
13 hours ago
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
nutrients contents is more about how its milled. We mill away the germ part of the seed which contains most nutrients since it contains fats that spoil the shelflife.
But I'm not sure one can even buy whole milled wheat like that... mabie speciality stores? I often buy rough flour that contains some husks for taste and texture, but I'm pretty sure that's technically fully milled white flour with husks mixed back in...
The starch part is mostly the same with more or less gluten. But ye modern grains contain much more more gluten (the article even mentioned difficult rising the bread) because it makes for fluffier bread.
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If you're sensitive to gluten, then it makes sense to avoid modern white flour... but it makes for badly risen bread.
you've ever tried barley?
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.
Probably less gluten, I believe high protein content is one of the things modern varieties have been bred for. It improves baking qualities.
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.