A consolidated list of Triticum species and varieties of Georgia to promote repatriation of local diversity from foreign genebanks

Ancient DNA typing indicates that the “new” glume wheat of early Eurasian agriculture is a cultivated member of the Triticum timopheevii group

“…where it was stored alongside, or as a mixture with, other cultivated wheats, notably einkorn (the other main component, along with T. timopheevii, of the cultivated zanduri crop grown until recently in Georgia - Menabde, 1948;Mosulishvili et al, 2017). Its separate storage at Çatalhöyük, and its predominance in samples at other sites (such as Feudvar) confirm that it is not simply a contaminant of other wheat crops.…”

“…The subsequent wide distribution of T. timopheevii at sites in western Asia and Europe dating from the Early Neolithic to the Iron Age (9 th to 1 st millennium BC) indicates that, although it may be described as a lost crop (depending on its relationship to the T. timopheevii of western Georgia), it was certainly not a failed crop, having persisted over a broad geographic area for at least seven thousand years. Triticum timopheevii can therefore no longer be looked upon as an endemic crop species restricted to western Georgia (Mosulishvili et al, 2017) or a "local episode in wheat-crop evolution" (Zohary et al, 2012). Instead this species must be viewed as a significant component of prehistoric Eurasian agriculture, with implications for our understanding of the origins of agriculture in southwest Asia.…”

“…Criteria for the identification of NGW grains were established at Bronze Age Stillfried (Austria) by Kohler-Schneider (2003), and additional criteria for the identification of chaff, on the basis of near complete ears at Bronze Age Lucone D (northern Italy), were described by Perego (2017). NGW has been referred to in some publications as 'striate emmeroid' (Fuller, 2012) or Sanduri (Kroll, 2016), the latter reflecting the Georgian name (zanduri) given to a mixture of wheat species grown in Georgia in recent times (Menabde, 1948;Dorofeev, 1969;Jones et al, 2000;Mosulishvili et al, 2017). Since its initial discovery, NGW has been reported at archaeological sites across western Asia and Europe (Kenéz et al, 2014, Toulemonde et al, 2015, where it was a significant component of the crop repertoire during the Neolithic and Bronze Age, perhaps cultivated (in some instances) as a mixed crop with einkorn (Jones et al, 2000;Kohler-Schneider, 2003;Perego, 2017), and it has recently been identified as a separate pure crop in its own right at Neolithic Çatalhöyük (Turkey) (Bogaard et al, 2013(Bogaard et al, , 2017.…”

“…Triticum timopheevii subsp. timopheevii was cultivated in Georgia until at least the mid-twentieth century (Stoletova, 1924;Dekaprelevic and Menabde, 1932;Dekaprelevic, 1954;Menabde and Ertizian, 1960) and is thought to have been endemic to this region (Zohary et al, 2012;Mosulishvili et al, 2017) having been domesticated locally (and perhaps recently) from Triticum timopheevii (Zhuk.) Zhuk.…”

Ancient Wheat Species (Triticum sphaerococcum Perc. and T. persicum Vav.) in Organic Farming: Influence of Sowing Density on Agronomic Traits, Pests and Diseases Occurrence, and Weed Infestation

“…Triticum persicum belongs to the group of tetraploid kinds of wheat. This species comes from the southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus in Georgia [11]. Some sources indicate that this wheat was the result of the hybridization of domesticated emmer wheat and common wheat [9].…”