WHEAT, the chief ingredient in everything from Ethiopian flat breads and Indian chapattis to French baguettes and American doughnuts, faces a crisis. Unless something drastic is done, climate change, disease and drought will ravage the crop that is the main source of food for 2 billion people.
Fortunately, a strategy is emerging to save wheat from oblivion. It involves neither genetic engineering nor subtle changes to farming techniques. Instead, the plant is being recreated over again from scratch. And test plantings of these “synthetic” wheats are raising hopes they will be resilient enough to feed billions of people well into…
