Abstract
To paraphrase Cox (1991), all polyploid wheat grown today outside of what was the ancient Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent is there due to germplasm exchange and introductions resulting in the most widely and diversely grown crop. Around 6000 years ago, the Neolithic Dispersal of wheat began the development of a staple-food producing sedentary culture and economy in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, and ultimately Europe (Harlan, 1987). During the Middle Ages (ca 1500 AD), wheat spread to the New World and Southern Africa, and in 1790 it was introduced to Australia. Mennonites emigrating from the Crimea to Kansas in 1873 carried seed of the landrace “Turkey Red”, the progenitor of the contemporary hard red winter wheats of the North American Great Plains (Smale and McBride, 1996). Though the Fertile Crescent served as the nucleus from where wheat radiated, traditional and modern breeders from all wheat growing areas of the world have made important contributions to gennplasm improvement. Peterson and Busch (1995), Smale and McBride (1996) and Rajaram and Ceccarelli (1998) have listed landraces and cultivars from more than twenty countries, which have made a major impact on global wheat improvement and production. Clearly, wheat today is the result of a truly international effort, for which we have all benefited.
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Braun, HJ., Payne, T.S., Mergoum, M., van Ginkel, M., Pfeiffer, W.H., Rajaram, S. (2001). International Collaboration on Wheat Improvement. In: Bedö, Z., Láng, L. (eds) Wheat in a Global Environment. Developments in Plant Breeding, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3674-9_14
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-3674-9_14
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