You Are What You Wheat
An Israeli initiative may be wheat’s best shot at genetic restoration.
Special for Shavuot: Although the Green Revolution brought wheat production to its highest capacity, it slashed wheat’s genetic diversity making it less resilient to climate change stressors. An Israeli initiative may be wheat’s best shot at genetic restoration.
For thousands of years, the Shavuot holiday has marked the season of the grain harvest in the Land of Israel. During the first and second temple period in Jerusalem, special bread made from the harvested wheat was offered as a kind of agricultural tithe to commemorate the occasion, and to this day our fields are still filled with this yellowish and highly sought-after crop.
Chef Dhruv Oberoi has come up with recipes like an amla and strawberry salad and Nilgiri passionfruit cocktail. Photo credit: Dhruv Oberoi
Amla and strawberry salad, shankalu chaat, guava baked into immunity-boosting pizza bases, tadgola ceviche. Indians are rediscovering local, seasonal fruit like never before, with everyone from top chefs to home chefs and caterers using it in inventive ways.
For years, fruit lovers had decried the loss in local varieties as restaurants and homes embraced imported apples, oranges, kiwi et al that were available round the year. Seasonality and local diversity, two cornerstones of Indian farm produce seemed to be getting lost in the process. But post-pandemic, foreign fruit does not command as much a snob value as local desi varieties.