Science Against Climate Change: Unlocking Wild Genes in Wheat

The Crop Trust is an international non-profit organization dedicated to conserving and making crop diversity available for use globally, forever and for the benefit of everyone.

Farmer placing a stone to vote for wheat variety.

Marchouch region, Morocco. Farmer Abdellah Bounagua carefully selects a row and places his one stone. Visiting farmers are given one stone and asked to select their preferred variety. The host farmer receives two stones. (Photo: Michael Major/Crop Trust)

By Benjamin Ferrer, Food Ingredients First

5 December 2022

A new drought-tolerant variety of durum wheat developed by plant breeders and gene bank staff at the International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) working in close collaboration with local farmers, with support from the Crop Trust, has been officially released for cultivation in Morocco.

Named Jabal, which means “mountain” in Arabic, this climate change-resilient variety got its name from one of the farmers taking part in the evaluation program during its development, who said that its distinctive black spikes were like the Atlas Mountains, “strong and proud.”