Wheat

The other night I was kept awake thinking about grass and wheat. I wondered why grass is perennial; you can cut it as much as you want, year after year, and it just keeps coming back, even if it goes to seed. However wheat, which is a grass, is annual. This means the fields it's grown in need to be ploughed up and the seed needs to be sown every year, which is costly, bad for the soil and involves a lot of fossil fuels to accomplish, not to mention the additional work this involves for the farmer.

It transpires that ancient grasses that were grown by our early ancestors for grain were undoubtedly perennial, but cultivation, constant crossing and selection for yield has resulted in them becoming annuals. Despite the increase in yield, between 2% and 8% of that increased yield has to be retained for next year's seed.

Scientists are looking at ways of genetically engineering wheat varieties to become annuals once more, but without sacrificing yield, which will be a massive plus for the environment, global yield (by recouping the seed percentage) and for farmers.