Origin of rye

The precise origin of rye domestication is unknown, but it was being cultivated at several locations in the Eastern Turkey and Armenia by 6000 BC.

The earliest sign of rye, associated with agriculture comes from central Anatolia. Rye is a typical ‘secondary crop’: it was primarily a weed in wheat and barley fields, later adopted as a crop.

Rye arrived in Europe through the Aegean Basin and the south Balkan as a cultivated crop by 4000 BC. Probably a cultivated crop in the Early Iron Age, is found in Roman Britain in both the highland and lowland zones, but not with great frequency.

Because of its tough constitution, it may have performed better than wheat and barley in the cooler, nutrient poor northern climates and therefore attracted human attraction.

It spread in the Roman Empire was a late phenomenon.

In Sweden, the cultivation of rye increased in the Middle Ages, partly because it was favored by the Church and the Crown. However, it was restricted to the provinces Lake Malaren and the adjoining regions to the south east.

In modern times, tetraploid and hexaploid wheat have been artificially hybridized with rye to form the new crop called Triticale.
Origin of rye

History of Rye

History of Rye
Rye is the fifth cereal in importance in the world and in the United States. It is exceeded in the world by corn, wheat, oats and rice.

Even though the grain was domesticated later than wheat, barley and its, there is more uncertainty about the history of rye than there is about some of the other cereal grains.

Some authorities believe it developed from Secale montanum Gus., a perennial weed that grows wild southern Europe and Central Asia.

It was probably was first grown as a separate crop (i.e., not in mix plantings) in southwestern Asia sometime around 1,000 BC.

It was never an important grain in this area in ancient times, but first appeared as a significant food crop in northern Europe. From there, cultivation of the grain spread southward throughout the continent and, after about the 16th century, across the southern part of Russia into Siberia.

During the Middle Ages, the poorer people of England ate bread made from rye, or from a mixture of rye and wheat, known as maslin.

It was unknown in the western hemisphere until it was brought to North America and to western South America by European settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries, and thence to the rest of South America, Australia, and South Africa.
History of Rye