Discovery How Stuff Works : Wheat

it started as a simple grass yet it's anything but simple for something so small it packs a wallop morphs into raw materials and even protects us and science has just scratched the surface of its vast potential we don't know everything there is no about we we're always innovating always finding new properties in the replications wheat coming up right now on how stuff works when we think of wheat we think of bread but this simple grain is everywhere it's in familiar foods hiding in fillers and faking out our taste buds in places we would never suspect if you're eating you're probably eating wheat wheat is as old as agriculture itself taking advantage of cutting-edge technologies to stake its claim as a plastic a wood and a futuristic indoor crop that may just rescue us from starvation without we'd you'd have to put down that pasta pour that beer down the drain deep-six that crab cake and step away from that golf tee if there was no wheat you'd have to because it's not just for bread anymore this may look like a typical door but under its skin it's a lot more not just because it's fire resistant up to 1700 degrees or that it is exceptionally strong or even that it's made with green technology this door is made of wheat yep wheat the same stuff that's in cookies and crackers doors are very important they're barriers and they do protect us there are three parts to a door and the part that is the wheat is actually the core which is about 90 percent of the door itself but how can we make a door isn't that a job for wood after all wheat is just a grass true but it's a lot different than your front lawn in the genus triticum grass is a common green plant with jointed stems and long narrow leaves and it's these jointed stems that provide the strength to stop a raging blaze we're going to go ahead and cut out a block to see what's inside this door is a 60 minute fire rated or a comparable wood door would be 20% heavier and yet it wouldn't hold the 60 minute rating as you can see here we have the three parts of the door which is the core the plug and the veneer for being the most important part for the fire rating and that's just one reason why we is in more places than you might think mainly known as a food source wheat is one of the top three produced crops in the world we after all is the main ingredient in breads pasta and even the beloved pizza it may look delicate but this is one tough plant I think wheats also unique in that it's grown in such diverse places so it's grown at sea level it's grown at high elevations it's grown in the tropics it's grown at high latitudes it's grown under high rainfall conditions it's grown under drought conditions so it's a very adaptable crop from the Australian outback to the northern chill of Russia and from the Badlands of the Dakotas to the Argentinean coast we is there within the six scientific classes of wheat are more than 30 thousand different varieties what makes them so different each variety is defined by specific physical characteristics adaptability and grain yield but what they do share is a kernel and the goods inside there are three major parts of a kernel of wheat the outer coating called bran is where the fiber is the heart of the kernel or germ contains essential oils vitamins and minerals but most of the kernel is made up of something called the endosperm where the complex carbohydrates are stored and two proteins that work together to make gluten but what is gluten it's a protein with elastic qualities that makes wheat unique and makes bread stretchy enough to rise the gluten that gives structure to bread and in cookies and other products that we make from wheat and that's pretty unique to wheat in terms of those protein properties durum wheat is the most ancient wheat and has the greatest concentration of gluten which makes it very tough flexibility and strength make durum wheat ideal for pasta products hard red spring wheat contains slightly less gluten which makes it great in breads because it withstands expansion and is light enough to rise if you need to bake a cake or a pastry soft red winter or soft white wheat would be best they have even less gluten which makes for softer dough hard white wheat this wheat is only grown in ten states but contains almost 12% protein making it very nutritious hard red winter wheat is king it is the largest wheat crop in the United States with more than 40 million acres harvested annually and it's gluten content makes it the most versatile these grains pack a punch filled with protein vitamins and minerals but how do these little berries get to our table it starts in the wheat field and if Mother Nature doesn't cooperate it'll end there too Kansas may be the largest wheat producer in the United States but each year fingers are crossed and prayers are recited as harvest approaches oh yeah what weird name why because the breadbasket of America grows hard red winter wheat it is planted in the fall before the weather turns the seeds go dormant during the winter chill then sprout in the spring but the Midwest in the spring can be a very unpredictable place spring downpours could mean floods devastating kale storms threaten to flatten entire fields of wheat and let's not forget the destruction a tornado can cause so when does the wheat grower make his decision to harvest his livelihood relies on the harvest within a matter of two weeks wheat will change from moist and green to dry and golden but it will spoil in the field just as fast the wheat is ready to harvest but it has rained heavily over the past two nights and even for a fourth generation wheat grower like Greg Johansen nerves are on edge the stem should snap off in hand when you break it off the head but as of today about anything happens being wet doesn't Thresh out in your hand very well and you should be able to buy them and they'll snap I mean they'll be hard and these I put my finger in that's showed that they've taken quite a bit of moisture it's back to life around here you know that's just the way it is the Johansson's 800 acres of wheat should be cut in one week but the soil is muddy and the wheat lies flat in spots what can he do the only thing he can wait for the earth to dry and pray for no more rain the green wise I think if Sun would come out we get a breeze like this probably by Sunday in a couple days but I'm not sure that is feasible being that wet on the ground inch and a half of rain and this being covered like this the Sun can't get to it luckily Mother Nature has cooperated with a break in the rain for a few days but the skies remain ominous now time is as precious as the crop itself a full-court press is underway to get the fields of wheat harvested before the next onslaught of weather we but how do you actually get the wheat out of the wheat field well the best way is to use wheats most valuable ally 80 tons and two stories tall the wheat harvester uses a grain header attachment with a razor-sharp site that cuts the stalks rushes the grain out and discards the chap and straw all in one pass flow going it down pretty bad down here in the trees and it's kind of damp the straw is you got to kind of slow you'll plug it up but its role in our I just got to be some slow going since harvest days are very long and into the wee hours of the night one of the benefits of a family farm means everyone ships in to get the job done yeah it's kind of fun to have everybody out helping having family help you know they're going to do it right you don't have to worry about it so once the kernels are harvested where do they go they are transferred to a stake bed truck where the wheat begins its journey off the farm from seed the harvest wheat growers endure months of harsh weather in the hopes of growing a successful and nourishing crop but during harvest where does all the grain go to the nearest grain elevator as soon as possible well we're about to get this truck full should get a dump here in another 15 20 minutes and get another small dump from the combine and with what we got left I suppose there's probably two more of these loads and maybe two more the bigger truckloads yet before we get done one acre of Greg's wheat will feed over 9,000 people for an entire day but that's a drop in the bucket when it comes to the amount of grain stored in just one average size grain elevator which can hold up to 7 million bushels we can actually stay in great condition for years if stored at the proper temperature with little humidity but if proper storage doesn't happen the grain could get too moist and kernels will go bad or too dry and they will shrivel up or if conditions are right they could explode that's right explode believe it or not there is a tiny part of the weak kernel that is deadly it's the weak dust particle something smaller than the diameter of a human hair just like flaky dry skin tiny dust fragments fly off the outer brand during transport the requirement of a dust explosion is to have small particles dispersed in a cloud so they're well surrounded by the oxygen of air the size of those particles are critical the maximum is about 300 microns but typically you want about 30 microns it's even smaller than you might think of a grain of sugar and from there it doesn't take much a welding spark or even static discharge to turn a grain silo into a 120-foot bomb to prove it chemical expert and professor Jimmy Oxley shows the explosive nature of dust with a few simple tools we're going to attempt the laboratory demonstration of a dust explosion with household flour candle for the ignition source and a 1 gallon paint pan four confinement and here we go if you compare a dust explosion to a detonation of high explosives the dust explosion is quite minor now to human beings that are in the unfortunate way if it's going to be catastrophic the recipe for a wheat bomb is simple tiny particles confinement and an ignition source to prevent catastrophe grain elevators run safety protocols including ventilation systems constant maintenance and not surprisingly absolutely no open flames so under a watchful eye weed continues its Trek to the next step in its long journey the mill this step however is gonna hurt a little each compact kernel is packed with vitamins and minerals including iron thiamine and potassium as well as vital carbohydrates fiber and protein but how do you get them out of the kernel that's where the mill comes in at the mill each kernel is smashed and transformed into flour flour milling is both a science and an art there is a science to it in the flow diagrams and how it's laid out in the process then also an art to it that the flour Miller has to know how to get just the grind by feel and touch and look Mills produce white flour or whole wheat flour and the difference between the two is all on the inside in the kernel white flour contains only the endosperm while whole wheat flour includes every single part of the kernel bran endosperm and germ so for every bushel of wheat 42 loaves of white bread are produced as compared to 60 loaves of whole wheat bread and that's a lot of bread no matter how you slice it at this horizon mill outside of Los Angeles California train cars unload their 200 thousand pound payloads of wheat kernels from the Midwest this steady stream of wheat will be transformed into 2 million pounds of flour every 24 hours but how does the mill get so much flour from such tiny sources the answer lies within a complex maze of chutes tubes pneumatic pressure systems purifiers and sifters that converts the wheat kernels to flour perhaps the most critical step is what the industry refers to as the first break like smashing a coconut to get the milk inside this modern version of an ancient grinding stone gets the job done in the blink of an eye it first goes to the first break rolls and near a corrugated roll and they're ten to twelve corrugations per inch and they're spiraled a little bit somewhere around three quarters of an inch and the rolls come against each other on a they go at different speed ones going to and a half times the speed of the other one so you're not really grinding you're shearing it's a shearing action refer to as middlings after the first break the endosperm is still quite coarse to reach a finer flour consistency the endosperm undergoes five more rounds of grinding and sifting so as a continuous float it goes through a grind it goes through a passage it's lifted it's sifted goes to another roll and we keep reducing that product down until there's no endosperm left to become flour now transform the wheat journey continues both trucks will carry 15,000 pounds of flour to their final destination which could be a bakery near you after all where would we be without our morning toast but with so many different varieties which we bakes into the best loaf of bread we use hard wheat for a yeast based product like bread to give it that strength to allow it to withstand the high temperature and then set as a loaf of bread in a cracker or a cereal you don't need that structure bread making is chemistry 101 using flour and yeast mix the two together and the yeast will consume the carbohydrates and sugars within the flour this process generates energy in the form of carbon dioxide gas because of its elasticity the gluten protein left in the flour traps the gas causing the dough to rise now keep in mind this is really exciting because bread in itself at a point in the operation it's alive we actually have yeast that's growing do you realize the importance of wheat flour like industrial bakers baura wheat has been baking bread for almost 80 years they know that there are few if any more iconic symbols of home health and happiness than a loaf of bread here wheat flour is the vital ingredient for the 12 million pounds of baked goods produced each month you know we as bakers the main ingredient is flour so and everything we do is based on flour Americans consume over 100 pounds of wheat flour a year much of that in the form of bread there's about 53 pounds of bread that's consumed by the average American consumer every year so when we look at that 53 pounds of bread we want to make sure that we're giving the consumer bread that's healthy and nutritious ever wonder how bread bakers perfect their recipes they can't taste every low so they test the flour this tells us about the quality of the flour what kind of loaf of bread is going to be produced if we use this flour it's got a mixing bowl which can mimic what is going to happen in the bakery it tells us about the mixing tolerance index how how strong is this flour is it going to take the stress in the mixer so without strong flour we have wheat bread sometimes Nature has a funny way of working salmon have to swim upstream to mate salamanders can regenerate lost limbs and wheat will grow just about anywhere with the right product but what could certain fish and amphibians possibly have in common with wheat surprising as it sounds they share a genetic trait all three are polyploid the cells of polyploid each have more than three sets of chromosomes in common wheat it's actually six sets three times more than in most human cells because of this wheat has a survival advantage it's versatile enough to survive practically anywhere but how it's all the result of thousands of years of natural adaptation and a little human intervention for centuries wheat farmers not only grew different strains but studied which had better yields and which didn't succumb to disease today modern geneticists and breeders do the same thing but why put so much time and energy into weeds for one simple yet compelling reason we still feeds the world if we can create for example a varieties of wheat that can withstand higher temperatures then in areas maybe where wheat was not commonly grown or even if it was grown the yield was low but now with the new varieties that are more tolerant to heat stress these varieties will produce more grain that is a significant achievement and that is ultimately our our goal to move forward it helps scientists to step backwards and understand where wheat comes from after all knowing your family tree can certainly fill in a few blanks even when your family tree is a grass ancient wild wheat which still grows in the Middle East only contains a few kernels in the head and falls to the ground when mature making harvest a back-breaking venture but about eight thousand years ago a mutant wheat plant that kept its head of kernels intact must have attracted the attention of an early botanist when man came out of Africa he saw these pure stand the wild wheat growing in the Middle East so these plants of course at maturity you will be able to see this plant a mile away because the Spiker the head will be still there whereas all the others the herd will be fallen off so that man was a genius think of genetics as an elaborate game of chance where a one in a million mutant may eventually change an entire species with enough time and a little help so how different is ancient wheat from today's wheat a lot different these days an average stalk of wheat contains dozens of seeds in a head unlike its ancient predecessors the result of thousands of years of nurturing and breeding so wheat breeders job is to develop new varieties that farmers will grow in their fields primarily our goals are to improve productivity so that we produce more grain also to protect that yield potential against pests and diseases other stresses that the crop will face in the field we also want to improve the quality so that it makes a good loaf of bread or a good cookie or whatever the end use is for that particular variety of wheat breeders have been in the fields for thousands of years but today's geneticists lend a helping hand or microscope from inside a lab in one ongoing study geneticists are searching for specific genes in wheat that allow the plant to thrive in high-stress climatic situations for geneticists are on ristic and his team the goal is to determine which wheat genes do best at high temperatures to test these stress tolerances specific wheat plants are grown under precisely controlled conditions we simply harvest all of these plants collect the grain and then assess the yield per plant so we count number of seeds we measure all the seeds we determine the mass of individual seeds and then we can make comparison between plans that we're experiencing heat stress versus those that did not experience heat stress OCO so-called control plants and compare different basically why bother because climate change causes crop stress and crop stress can lower yields and that worries everyone from growers to geneticists to consumers even today our global food supply is precarious reliant as it is on nature soil water and oxygen however farmers and scientists all over the world strive to make the system stable and devote their lives to this purpose my objective is not only to satisfy my curiosity and to study how plants respond to heat stress but also to try to help our nation and humanity throughout the world to improve the quality of food to improve the production of food to have better yield under stressful environmental conditions so that we can feed the population super wheat it'll grow anywhere anytime this is the dream farmers had 8,000 years ago and it's what drives today's wheat breeders but how does the genetic information from one wheat plant get into another physical crossbreeding is both the most historic and easiest approach and it's simply one low-tech way to pick the best of the best breeders select two plants for their admirable characteristics such as good kernel size and high protein content the wheat plant is self pollinating containing both male and female reproductive structures cut the male anthers and their pollen will not reach the female structures pollen from another wheat plant can now be introduced completing the cross over thousands of years scientists have learned a thing or two about this reproduction process but wheat still hides its secrets wheat breeding is much more complicated than it looks there's a lot that we don't know so we talk about breeding as both art and science and so the science is knowing the genetics knowing how traits are inherited how much the environment influences expression of a trait it's also art in the breeder goes out in the field to make selections by visually looking at a plant and saying I like this one it has good disease resistance it's the right maturity as we go along we see more of a transition toward science and understanding the genetics better the human genome is made up of around 25,000 protein coding genes the wheat genome is believed to be six times larger we have a long ways to go in that regard in terms of understanding all the different genes how they act and how they interact within the genome to give us the product that we have in the field genetic engineering or the insertion of genetic information from one we plant into another is doable but that process is left to laboratory research scientists but with so many thousands of varieties in scientists to really investigate every type of wheat yes this investigation is ongoing at the wheat genetic and genomic resources center gene bank at Kansas State University here more than 11,000 different lines of wheat seed from around the world are safely stored in catalogued including 2,500 wild varieties that have survived for thousands of years since wheat still thrives in the wild it only makes sense that studying its genetic secrets may help battle disease climate and pest crises in crops around the world all of this research is crucial to breeders and geneticists why because the creation of a new wheat variety can take upwards of 15 years to develop and for those who succeed the reward is more than scientific this one I'm kind of proud of because this is my first million acre wheat variety this is a variety called Overlea we released this in 2003 it was the number one weed in Kansas in 2006 it's on about 17 percent of the acres this year which would equate to about 1.7 million acres it's a variety that has some interesting characteristics a very high yielding variety it also has a larger seed which is important because that helps the milling quality because you can get a larger amount of flour from a bushel of wheat if the seed is larger it also has very high quality going with very good yield and that's kind of a difficult combination to get because they tend to be negatively correlated while scientists work to create super weed other strive to change if not shatter traditional wheat farming practices say goodbye to fuel sucking combines toxic pesticides and harmful fertilizers how about no soil no fertilizer and 65% less water than conventional farming methods this baby wheat commonly called wheatgrass contains 100 percent of the nutritional value of the plant unlike soil based farming this wheat contains more protein more enzymes vitamin B zinc and iron because the root system seed and chute are all edible it is grown using a farming method called aeroponics a process developed by entrepreneur Richard stoner working with the National Science Foundation NASA and a select group of scientists stoner is attempting to rethink how we grow food in order to feed an ever-increasing global population aeroponics is the process of growing plants and air in a nutrient-rich environment aeroponics is a soilless process and the plants are suspended 100% in air both at the root system and at the leaf surfaces of the plant and it's suspended in an aeroponic chamber which then delivers a hydro atomized spray to the plants it may not look like a Kansas wheat field but this greenhouse has similar capabilities the aeroponic process can grow wheat just like it can in the field we can plant this entire tray and grow wheat all the way to harvest where we harvest the grain from the weak but what's the upside to the aeroponic system it's not designed to replace traditional agriculture but supplement the food supply and grow vital plants like wheat in places where crops usually aren't found we can grow every day 365 days a year inside a climate-controlled warehouse Agra houses goal is to put systems everywhere we can and help reduce the carbon footprint by increasing the amount of biomass per square foot basis we can grow in densities that have been unheard of in the last 20 years and so in that manner we can supplement and increase the food supply for cities and Metropolitan's everywhere the global population is estimated to reach over 9 billion by 2050 and there's growing concern about a viable food supply maybe the soilless system will levy 8 some of that pressure because there is no single answer to the future of the world's food supply solving this future food crisis will require new innovation intensive research and determined farmers but as in centuries past wheats resilience may well carry us through difficult times Cheers cool refreshing great tasting its beer quite possibly the oldest alcoholic beverage ever brewed and wheat plays a part in this ancient science adding body taste and complexity to what would otherwise be barley beer but what is the element of wheat that provides the unique flavor it's in the starch wheat beers an ale and to compare it to a lager it's like comparing two different animals because a lager is meant to be nice and light and very low color and clean and crisp a wheat beer is more of a full bodied beer and that's what the wheat is doing for us wheat beer is considered a craft brew why because although it is a key component wheat is not the main ingredient in the blend since 1989 Boulevard Brewing Company has been crafting wheat beer cheer and exploring its tasteful possibilities when I taste the wheat here all I'm looking for is that's got the proper texture and I'm really just looking for all flavors at this point it's nothing analytical right now but because tasting it and feeling it your mouth that's just it's the simplest most easy quality control check that you can do every truckload will get a sample all the bottom of the truck and we'll taste it and we also have a few lab tests that we do to it the process of brewing with wheat is no different from that of 100% barley beer the one everyone knows instead its distinctive taste is formed by chemical reactions at each stage of brewing beginning with the malt this is where the brewer tricks the grain into germinating now the process of malting is where you almost get the grain in a environment where it thinks is going to become a plant so what it needs is it needs to feel some water on its feet and some Sun on his back and none of things hey this is the perfect environment for me to become a plant germination releases critical enzymes that will convert the starch in the wheat grain into sugar the starch itself is a long chain of sugars when the starches are broken down by enzymes they become a form of sugar that another ingredient yeast will gorge on the byproduct of the feast is alcohol although this fermentation process resembles traditional brewing that doesn't mean it's easy after all you've been broken down starch is still starchy wheat is a little bit more trickier than Bartok to work with the main difference wheat is that it doesn't have a husk so husks on the Barty the main reason why barley is used is because there's husks that helps as a filtration but we which really doesn't have a husk it's just kind of gummy gets gummy because of all the gums and and so that slows that runoff how does a brewer work around these difficulties the answer is in the recipe wheat beer is between 30 and 50 percent wheat the rest is traditional barley the cereal grain that adds clarity and hops hops a member of the hemp family lends the brew and acidic flavor as well as antibacterial properties but even if brewing wheat beer isn't the easiest it's the unique flavor that makes it so distinctive for beer lovers worldwide after all exploiting the taste of wheat is really what it's all about and to do so boulevard brooms against the grain leaving their wheat beer unfiltered which really means less processing you know where you're not filtering all of the ingredients out of the beer and that's one of the reasons you have the haze is because you just haven't processed it so much and while taste may be paramount a beer has to look good to looks a little different tastes just a hair fuller it gives a lot a little bit more flavor it's some citrus you've notes in there and some very refreshing notes and if they start and good at the end of the day in kegs are in bottles 70% of boulevards business is wheat beer but it isn't easy to make each batch just as good ads if not better than the last when you buy six pack of beer you want it to be perfect you want it to have be the same no matter how the harvest of the weeds of the harvest of the cops or the harvest of the barley have been people want it to be consistent consistency is not only a theme for the brewer but the wheat breeder grower and Miller who all require a combination of science and art to manipulate wheats unique properties this multifaceted grain has transformative abilities that are unparalleled and because of this there are those who are thinking outside the wheat box wheat is the most widely grown food crop in the world so what if we could use its chemistry to do more than simply feed ourselves wheat stores the energy produced by photosynthesis in the form of starch and every grain contains nearly 60% starch starch is a polysaccharide carbohydrate essentially a long chain of glucose units it's what causes flour to have the consistency of paste when wet and as a result flour is used as a thickening agent but did you ever think your bread flour could be transformed into plastic here at MGP ingredients technology and innovation center they have dug into the treasure chest of wheats chemistry and found opportunity they call it Terra Tech resin it's probably fair to say the wheat starch has been overlooked a bit our objective is is to develop bio plastics which will run on existing technology and existing equipment and that's been a bit of a challenge but we've made huge progress wheat starch and protein are extracted from flour through a washing process and then dried the starch is then combined with a secondary polymer ingredient during an extrusion or shaping process a chemical reaction occurs binding these ingredients together the end result is a biodegradable polymer resin produced in the form of small pellets these pellets can be molded into products like credit cards cutlery and golf tees but unlike conventional plastic this weak plastic is 100% biodegradable and it's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new uses for wheat what about a new way of looking at food huit is unique in that it has glide ins and glue Tenon's and those two components form vital wheat gluten and that is very unique in the protein world unique because vital wheat gluten that stuff that holds the grain together is elastic it has a consistency like no other protein it's also tasteless and it has a texture that surprisingly looks like meat so is it a chicken nugget or is it wheat MGP ingredients open the door to a new food market that uses textured wheat proteins instead of meat they call it wheat X well we text is a very unique in the properties of looking like real meat so when you take the product and you pull it apart and you look at it it has myofibrils or strands that look like truffaut meat muscle products and those characteristics directly come from the wheat gluten itself this test kitchen is where wheat tastes like sausages pepperoni or even crab cakes since all are made with some percentage of wheat the other unique property of being able to use wheat gluten and texture proteins is being able to manipulate the texture of the product who's the customer for fake meat meat eaters who want a little less cholesterol in their diet vegetarians and manufacturers who want to keep cost manageable wheat as meat or wheat X could be the answer yet as far as the humble wheat kernel has come creative and scientific advancement doesn't stop we don't know everything there is no about we we're always innovating always finding new properties and new applications every day and MGP ingredients isn't the only company exploiting the pliability of wheats chemistry environment become positive you have ventured not to the grain went to the straw tough strong light and plentiful wheat straw has traditionally been treated as a useless by-product but now it's the revolutionary ingredient for new building materials the fibrous part of this wheat straw you notice it's fairly strong so it does have certain certain inherent structural properties that other particle particles would not have the torsional or longitudinal strength of wheat straw and see what I'm doing here you can actually tug on it pretty well and that's that's that strong solid fiber named bio fiber wheat this sturdy offering is both an aesthetic and functional alternative to traditional hardwood or particle board products if you get particleboard wet it swells but if I get the wheat board wet it swells only 1/3 as much so it's going to be much more dense it's not going to swell as much and at the end of the day you have a non formaldehyde ingredient in wood based particle board carcinogenic formaldehyde is the binder that keeps it all together but with bio fiber wheat environ uses a urethane based resin that keeps performance high and the customer safe weed straw is trucked into environs Minnesota factory from across North America and Canada in bales weighing twelve hundred and fifty pounds which also happens to be the average weight of a dairy cow after inspection for rot and any garbage the wheat straw enters the first machine on the line where it's not into small fibers we blend it with a resin it's a formaldehyde free resin that we run through the system you get a core in a surface we have something called a three layer former that lays down the bottom the middle and then the top so you get two surfaces and you get a core this layering technique improves durability and strength for cabinets furniture or floors even for weak doors but perhaps most intriguingly environs manufacturer of bio fiber wheat creates a negative carbon footprint according to the US Department of Agriculture this is just another reason that there's growing interest in wheat beyond its value as food but in the end these amber waves of grain in the field connect us to the centuries-old traditions of farming family hearth and home

Channel: Manu John

Views: 507,789

Rating: 4.6244044 out of 5

Keywords: Discovery, How stuff works, Wheat, Documentary, videos

Id: F4VoVLlyuS0

Length: 42min 39sec (2559 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2013