Winter cereals

Plant material and collections

Triticale

In order to obtain varieties of triticale, plant material from the International Centre for Corn and Wheat Improvement (CIMMYT, in its Spanish abbreviation) was used. After years of improvement at CICYTEX, different lines have been obtained and maintained and the most interesting ones from a commercialisation viewpoint have been registered.

Old wheats

We have a collection of 40 varieties of local old wheats form the region, which were given to us by INIA (The National Institute for Farming and Food Research and Technology), some date back to the beginning of the last century. Pelón Rojo, Cabezorro or Pichi are some of the common names for some of these wheats. We also have a collection of varieties of Triticum dicoccum (emmer wheat) from our region and Triticum monococcum (einkorn wheat) from various areas of Spain provided by INIA. Unlike Triticum aestivum (the common wheat grown today), which is hexaploid (it has 6 sets of chromosomes), T. dicoccum is tetraploid and T. monococcum (2 sets of chromosomes) is diploid. T. monococcum is the type of wheat with the lowest number of chromosomes.