The heart of the wheat

The domestication of grasses took place some 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. Strains were gradually selected whose seeds remained attached to the fruiting head long enough for the crop to be harvested and these strains gave rise to the wheat and barley we know today. Wheat grain was ground between stones to a coarse flour and as early as the Roman period sieves were used to separate bran from the fine flour to allow a more palatable bread to be baked. Even when advanced to the watermill and windmill, stone‐grinding still left a proportion of the germ in the flour in a powdered state. We now know that this flour must have stored badly, soon gone rancid and lost its baking qualities due to the presence of oil from the fine particles of raw germ. With the advent of the roller‐mill in the nineteenth century came the possibility of removing the intact germ to produce a stable flour and to yield wheat germ which could be stabilised, safely stored and used in its own right as a nutritious food. The purpose of this article is to discuss the nature, source, applications and composition of wheat germ and in particular its nutritional value.