{"id":264,"date":"2017-05-24T22:59:14","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T22:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/?p=264"},"modified":"2017-05-25T01:11:52","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T01:11:52","slug":"the-sicilian-wheat-research-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/2017\/05\/24\/the-sicilian-wheat-research-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Granicoltura – The Sicilian Wheat Research Station"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sicilian wheat research station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the 20th May I had the wonderful\u00a0opportunity to attend Biodiversity Day at the “Stazione Consorziale Sperimentale di Granicoltura per la Sicilia”<\/a>\u00a0in Caltagirone,\u00a0the Sicilian wheat research station\u00a0responsible for the conservation of local varieties, breeding and research for the wheat growing and processing sector. The station was founded in 1927 and its first director, Dr Ugo de Cillis, was one of the first Italian scientists to understand the importance of genetic resources, in a region which is one of the centres of origins of durum wheat. Under his direction, a comprehensive inventory of Sicily’s wheat landraces was undertaken, and over 50 local varieties of Triticum durum<\/em>, aestivum<\/em> and turanicum<\/em>\u00a0were collected and described.<\/p>\n

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Sicilian durum wheat local variety Scorsonera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On the open day, all of this diversity was beautiful laid out in long plots offering the most spectacular view of colours and shapes.<\/p>\n

In Italy local wheat varieties are known today by the name\u00a0“grani antichi” (ancient wheat). The term is gaining traction amongst consumers and producers, due to rising interest for local foods and wheat varieties containing gluten which is easier to digest, as well as having superior organoleptic characteristics.<\/p>\n

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Punters enjoying Biodiversity day at Granicoltura<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nello Blangiforti, gene bank curator at the research station and author of the recently published “I grani antichi siciliani”<\/a> (Sicily’s ancient wheats) does not agree with the (ab)use of the adjective ancient to describe local varieties: “The term ancient is inappropriate but evokes a romantic, bucolic idea of something which is tied to the past and can propel us into the future. It appears to work quite well in media and communication in general. In reality, what we are talking about are proper varieties, with very little ancient about them, except for the fact that they were widely cultivated in the past. We prefer to call them local varieties, because farmers selected them over the centuries. The farmer selected the best ears, those who looked more beautiful or were more productive: hence engaging in proper variety selection\u00a0(variety). The environment then defined the areas of adaptation (local). Through this process we assisted to a\u00a0proper and authentic plant breeding process<\/em>“.<\/p>\n

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Nello Blangiforti tirelessly guiding visitors through the station’s local varieties plots<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 20th May I had the wonderful\u00a0opportunity to attend Biodiversity Day at the “Stazione Consorziale Sperimentale di Granicoltura per la Sicilia”\u00a0in Caltagirone,\u00a0the Sicilian wheat research station\u00a0responsible for the conservation of local varieties, breeding and research for the wheat growing and processing sector. The station was founded in 1927 and its first director, Dr Ugo … Continue reading “Granicoltura – The Sicilian Wheat Research Station”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,18],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-agrobiodiversity","category-nutrition","tag-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.plantagbiosciences.org\/people\/matteo-petitti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}