Short answers, pulled from the story.
The first evidence of wheat cultivation appears in the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BC. This process began in the quiet, rocky soils of Southwest Asia where hunter-gatherers started domesticating wild wheats.
Wheat has a complex genome created by repeated hybridization and polyploidy resulting in two, four, or six sets of chromosomes. Common bread wheat is hexaploid with six sets of chromosomes derived from wild emmer and goatgrass.
World wheat production reached 799 million tonnes in 2023. China, India, and Russia collectively provided 42.4 percent of the world total.
Coeliac disease affects about 1 percent of the general population in developed countries and requires a strict lifelong gluten-free diet. Other conditions include non-coeliac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia, and dermatitis herpetiformis.
The Ug99 strain of stem rust is caused by Puccinia graminis f. sp. tritici and has the potential to destroy wheat crops globally if not controlled. Resistance genes against this strain have been identified from wild relative Aegilops tauschii.
Vincent van Gogh created the series Wheat Fields between 1885 and 1890 including Wheatfield with Crows. Agnes Denes grew a two-acre field of wheat at Battery Park, Manhattan, in 1982.