Major cultivated species of wheat :

Common Wheat or Bread wheat - A hexaploid species that is the most widely cultivated in the world. Bread wheat is an allohexaploid . Free-threshing wheat is closely related to spelt. As with spelt, genes contributed from goatgrass give bread wheat greater cold hardiness than most wheats, and it is cultivated throughout the world's temperate regions.


Durum: Durum wheat or Macaroni wheat is the only tetraploid species of wheat widely cultivated today. Durum is the hardest of all wheats. Its high protein content and gluten strength make durum good for pasta and bread. It is not, however, good for cakes, which should be made from soft wheat or they will be tough, because of the high gluten content of durum.

Einkorn wheat: Einkorn wheat was one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat, alongside emmer wheat . Grains of wild einkorn have been found in Epi-Paleolithic sites of the Fertile Crescent. It was first domesticated approximately 9000 years ago, in the Pre Pottery Neolithic A or B periods. Its cultivation decreased in the Bronze Age, and today it is considered a relict crop that is rarely planted. It remains as a local crop, often for bulgur or as animal feed, in mountainous areas of France, Morocco, the former Yugoslavia, Turkey and other countries.

Emmer: Emmer wheat, also known as farro especially in Italy, is a low yielding, awned wheat. It was one of the first crops domesticated in the Near East. It was widely cultivated in the ancient world, but is now a relict crop in mountainous regions of Europe and Asia. Emmer's main use is as a human food, though it is also used for animal feed.

Ethnographic evidence from Turkey and other emmer-growing areas suggests that emmer makes good bread, and this is supported by evidence of its widespread consumption as bread in ancient Egypt. Emmer bread is widely available in Switzerland. In Italy farro is traditionally consumed as whole grains, in soup. Its use for making pasta is a recent response to the health food market; some judge that emmer pasta has an unattractive texture.