Ancient grains from Judean Desert caves rewrite the story of wheat domestication

A study published in Nature Plants on 23 April 2026 used DNA from ancient wheat grains to show that domesticated wheat did not arise in a single place or moment. The work was led by researchers at the University of Haifa and Bar-Ilan University, including Prof. Tzion Fahima, Prof. Assaf Distelfeld and archaeobotanist Prof. Ehud Weiss, together with Prof. Curtis Pozniak of the University of Saskatchewan, with contributions from the Israel Antiquities Authority, Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University and the Volcani Institute.

The team analysed grains roughly 6,000 to 3,000 years old, preserved in the dry caves of the Judean Desert and at the ancient copper mines of Timna. Arid conditions there keep plant material, and sometimes its DNA, in unusually good condition. By comparing these genomes with modern wild and cultivated wheat, the researchers could trace where key traits came from.

The central trait of domesticated wheat is a spike that does not shatter when ripe, so farmers can harvest the grain instead of losing it to the ground. The study found that the mutations behind this trait, in genes known as Btr1-A and Btr1-B, appear to have arisen separately in different wild populations and were later brought together by hybridisation, possibly more than once. Wild emmer wheat from the southern Levant, including the land of Israel, played a central early role. The ancient samples were also genetically close to traditional wheat lines from Ethiopia, the Arabian Peninsula and India, which the authors describe as a missing link in the crop's spread.

Fahima told the Israeli science site Hayadan that domestication was built on encounters, mixing and hybridisation between different gene pools rather than one decisive event.