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When Aaron Aaronson discovered the mother of wheat in Israel, he did not know that this was also the place where, 116 years later, the genome of the plant, which is one of the most basic components of the human diet, would be deciphered. And now that its prices in the world are soaring and its shortage is intensifying, Israeli knowledge may be the lifeline of the entire world.
The global wheat crisis is getting worse, and is slowly approaching a level that is already threatened by the food security of large parts of the world. The most basic component of the human diet is in the eyes of the geopolitical storm that has arisen in the wake of the war in Ukraine, and in addition, climate change and global warming are hurting crops and accelerating population growth is creating demand that global agriculture is struggling to meet.
Russia and Ukraine are the world’s main suppliers of wheat, alongside the US, and now Ukraine’s ports are under siege. India and China, which were the largest exporters of wheat, have stopped exporting because they need everything they grow. “Stopping imports from Ukraine is critical in terms of supply Wheat in the world, “says Prof. Assaf Distelfeld from the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Haifa.
Prof. Assaf Distelfeld, decoder of the wheat genome / Photo: YouTube screenshot
This situation is already reflected in dramatic price increases around the world. In Israel, for example, the price of wheat for human consumption has risen by about 20% since the outbreak of the war in Europe, and experts claim that there may be an increase of up to 70% in the future. Since slaughter is also used as animal feed, the increase in its prices is expected to lead to a jump in the prices of other animal food products such as meat, milk and eggs.
In Israel, wheat shortages are not expected at this stage, as the reserves – according to Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman – are full, but this is because we are willing to pay the high prices that are currently required.
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All this of course connects to the climate crisis, which also adversely affects wheat crops: In a recent article published by Dr. David Bonfil, a wheat researcher from the Gilat Research Center at the Volcanic Institute, with Dr. David Hellman from the Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment (of the Hebrew University) In the scientific journal Scientific Reports, which analyzed 60 years of wheat cultivation globally, the two state that climate change, and especially warming and drought, are adversely affecting the increase in wheat yield. This means that even though the world population is growing, the wheat crop is not – which will increase the shortage and translate into rising prices.
According to Prof. Zion Fahima, Head of the Laboratory of Plant Genomics and Disease Resistance from the Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology at the University of Haifa, “In order to provide the required amount of wheat in 2050, when there will be about 10 billion people on earth, The problem is that crop improvement is very slow and small, “about 1% per year – and this is not always the case, because there can be a large impact of extreme climatic events”, Says Prof. Distelfeld.
What does this mean for us? In the land of wheat it is still one of the main crops: it covers a third of the agricultural area and every year about 1.1 million dunams are sown here, according to Dr. Bonfil. But that is not enough. The crop here (about 100,000 tons per year) manages to give a very small solution To demand, and in most years provides only 5% -10% of consumption in the country.If we also take into account the needs of animals, then we stand at about 2.5% of consumption only – the rest we import.
Wheat / Photo: Shutterstock
“80% -90% of the wheat we consume in Israel relies heavily on imports,” says Prof. Eyal Kimhi, director of the Department of Environmental Economics at the Hebrew University’s Faculty of Agriculture and vice president of the Shoresh Institute for Socio-Economic Research. “It would have been better, of course, for Israel to produce a larger share of its consumption, but wheat needs land and water – two resources that we are in short supply. Therefore, we depend on everything that happens in the world. Others, but it is on the margins, and we depend on world supplies. “
And what is expected this time?
“As long as it is possible to pay more for wheat, there will be no shortage in Israel. However, the rise in the price of wheat will eventually lead to price increases in many food products, including milk, meat and eggs, as the animals feed on imported grains. “At some point, it will have to raise the prices of regulated products as well.”
It all starts with the mother of wheat
So far the less good news but there are also good ones: Israel may be the one to solve the long-term crisis that looms over global food security – all thanks to Aaron Aaronson, who was Sarah Aaronson’s brother and head of the Nili underground, but also a very talented botanist, agronomist and geologist. In 1906, Aaronson discovered the mother of wheat (wild wheat) on the soil of the land – the discovery gave him worldwide fame. Thanks to this discovery, the wheat genome was completed, which was completed four years ago. The genome is actually the manual of the wheat. It is five times larger than the human genome and more complicated. “
Aaron Aaronson. “Even then, expect the use of wild varieties to contribute to the improvement of cultivated wheat” / Photo: Wikipedia
“The wheat we enjoy today is called cultivated wheat,” explains Prof. Fahima. To improve the cultivated wheat. “
And how will it help us in life? “While the wild wheat Aaronson found adapted to conditions of heat, weather volatility and low rainfall, cultivated wheat has been nurtured to cope with a variety of conditions and has lost over the years some of its genetic diversity,” Distellfeld explains. “So Aaronson’s vision was to take advantage of the genetic diversity that exists in wild wheat to enrich the cultivated wheat. In this way it is possible to isolate the relevant traits, thus actually leading to increased crop and higher protein values and locating disease resistance genes.
According to Distelfeld, the information generated from the genome mapping will allow a faster and better link between the existing genetic diversity and the desired traits in each strain in its growing area, thus improving the crop. “Over the years varieties have been selected that could give a larger crop, but the problem with wheat is that the improvement of the crop is very small and slow, about 1% per year, and not always. Therefore, even if we increase the crop, we will not break the wheat deficiency “The world eventually grew. On the other hand, if we can locate the genes responsible for growing the crop, we can create a correction in the equation.”
According to Prof. Fahima, the need to genetically improve the cultivated wheat to increase the crop sends the researchers back to the mother wheat: “Because the genetic variability in the cultivated wheat is very low, we return to the wheat mother to find genes that can cultivate the cultivated wheat.”
Wild wheat is rich in diseases that are resistant to destructive diseases, so the improvement of such varieties for diseases can contribute to increasing crops and reducing the use of pesticides. Prof. Fahima’s research group has been working for about 30 years on the detection, genetic mapping and isolation of genes derived from wild wheat and resistant to these diseases and transferring them into cultivated wheat varieties. The Binational Foundation for Research and Agricultural Development of the United States and Israel estimated Prof. Fahima’s research contribution to the world economy at $ 120 million, defining it as one of the three most important of more than 1,300 studies funded by the foundation in its 40 years of existence.
Israeli Bank for Gardens
The genes that the research teams of Prof. Fahima and Prof. Distelfeld collect are curated by the Bank for Wild Cereals, which was established by Prof. Eviatar Nevo, winner of the Israel Prize, at the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa 40 years ago. This collection, which already contains about 15,000 varieties, was included in the list of the 100 most important research infrastructures of the State of Israel and received a donation that enabled the institute to build a new home with cold and freezing rooms that will preserve seeds for future generations. “There are important genes that are only found in our bank, because the original wild wheat populations were destroyed by the accelerated urban development of the State of Israel,” says Prof. Fahima.
“On the other hand, wild wheat populations in the wild continue to evolve and adapt to climate change, new diseases and new breeds of pathogens, so it is important to preserve wild grains in their natural habitats as well. We are constantly researching “It can certainly be said that although Israel contributes little to global wheat production, it is an empire of knowledge in everything related to the study of wild wheat and the contribution of genes to the improvement of world cultural wheat.”
One of the challenges in improving wheat, explains Dr. Roy Ben-David, a researcher and cultivator of winter cereals from the Volcanic Institute, is to achieve crop stability under a changing climate. This is also what his work focuses on. “Crop and quality,” he says, In the focus of the cultivators. But agrotechnics are also important to prevent climate damage. “
According to Ben-David, Israel also has an important role to play in the field of cultivation. For example, Dr. Uri Kushnir nurtured the Benjamin variety, tolerated heat and shows good performance even at high night temperatures, and the spring variety, which has an advantage in heat and dry conditions.