From durum wheat to pasta: a very recent story in FranceDurum wheat prices at their lowest for thirty yearsA €43 million sovereignty plan to revive the French durum wheat sector

Until the early 1950s, even if pasta was made in France, all durum wheat was imported. After the war, pasta manufacturers encouraged the production of durum wheat on French soil. The first varieties were not adapted to our climate and it was difficult or even impossible to transform them into pasta. In 1983, researchers, breeders, farmers, cooperatives, traders and processors came together to create the French durum wheat sector. Durum wheat, one of the parents of soft wheat It all began on the slopes of the Karaca Dag volcano, in the south-east of Turkey, where the ancestors of wheat developed. An initial natural hybridization produced a tetraploid wheat (2 sets of 7 pairs of chromosomes or genomes A and B) with a coated grain. Durum wheat, similar to the wheat we know today, appeared around 7,000 years before Jesus Christ, following a mutation resulting in wheat with a naked grain. It is one of the possible parents of soft wheat (3 sets of 7 pairs of chromosomes – genomes A, B ...