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	Image: COURTESY OF ZVI PELEG AND ASSAF DISTELFELD
	NUTRITIOUS WHEAT: A newly discovered gene boosts the protein, zinc and iron available in wheat by as much as 15 percent and can be incorporated without resorting to genetic modification.

Humanity has been growing wheat as a staple crop for thousands of years, and we currently grow 620 million tons of the grain annually. During that span, however, its nutrition has largely not improved; in fact, it may have declined. But by returning to wheat's wild roots, researchers have found a gene that will boost the grain's nutritional value by speeding up its life span.

Wheat breeder Jorge Dubcovsky of the University of California, Davis, led an international team that discovered the gene-- dubbed gpc-B1 for its effect on grain protein content--in a wild emmer wheat that has grown naturally in the Middle East for millennia. His colleague Cristobel Uauy examined cultivated wheat breeds and discovered they all shared a nonworking copy of this gene. By inserting a cloned version of the wild gene into conventional wheat plants they boosted the amount of protein, zinc and iron in the grain by 10 to 15 percent. The gene works by making the plant mature more rapidly, thus speeding up the transfer of these nutrients from the leaves to the grain.