Sonora, a soft white landrace wheat, has a history here in the Southwestern United States, because it is a variety grown early by the agricultural Native Americans in Mexico. They used it to make their whole wheat tortillas, and apparently liked the way it could be ground to a whole wheat flour on their metate. Sonora wheat might be the very first wheat successfully introduced onto the American continent soon after Columbus’s famous journey of discovery in 1492. It was grown in the Southwest continuously until about 1960.

Hourani wheat seeds had been stored by King Herod 2,000 years ago in the Masada Fortress in the Middle East’s Fertile Crescent until they were discovered and excavated (1). The Hourani durum wheat landrace was cultivated for millennia in the Houran plateau of Northern Jordan and Southern Syria (2).