Spikelet in the context of "Rachis"

Barley (Hordeum vulgare), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. One of the first cultivated grains, it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikelets and making it much easier to harvest. Its use then spread throughout Eurasia by 2000 BC. Barley prefers relatively low temperatures and well-drained soil to grow. It is relatively tolerant of drought and soil salinity, but is less winter-hardy than wheat or rye.

In 2023, barley was fourth among grains in quantity produced, 146 million tonnes, behind maize, rice, and wheat. Globally, 70% of barley production is used as animal feed, while 30% is used as a source of fermentable material for beer, or further distilled into whisky, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt using a traditional and ancient method of preparation. In English folklore, John Barleycorn personifies the grain and the alcoholic beverages made from it. English pub names such as The Barley Mow allude to its role in the production of beer.

In agriculture, shattering is the dispersal of a crop's seeds upon their becoming ripe. From an agricultural perspective this is generally an undesirable process, and in the history of crop domestication several important advances have involved a mutation in a crop plant that reduced shattering—instead of the seeds being dispersed as soon as they were ripe, the mutant plants retained the seeds for longer, which made harvesting much more effective. Non-shattering phenotype is one of the prerequisites for plant breeding especially when introgressing valuable traits from wild varieties of domesticated crops.

A particularly important mutation that was selected very early in the history of agriculture removed the "brittle rachis" problem from wheat. A ripe head ("ear") of wild-type wheat is easily shattered into dispersal units when touched, or blown by the wind, because during ripening a series of abscission layers forms that divides the rachis into short segments, each attached to a single spikelet (which contains 2–3 grains along with chaff).

Einkorn (from German Einkorn, literally "single grain") can refer to either a wild species of wheat (Triticum) or a domesticated form of wheat. The wild form is T. boeoticum (syn. T. m. subsp. boeoticum), and the domesticated form is T. monococcum (syn. T. m. subsp. monococcum). Einkorn is a diploid species (2n = 14 chromosomes) of hulled wheat, with tough glumes (husks) that tightly enclose the grains. The cultivated form is similar to the wild, except that the ear stays intact when ripe and the seeds are larger. The domestic form is known as petit épeautre in French, Einkorn in German, "einkorn" or "littlespelt" in English, piccolo farro in Italian and escanda menor in Spanish. The name refers to the fact that each spikelet contains only one grain.

Einkorn wheat was one of the first plants to be domesticated and cultivated.

In botany, a glume is a bract (leaf-like structure) below a spikelet in the inflorescence (flower cluster) of grasses (Poaceae) or the flowers of sedges (Cyperaceae). There are two other types of bracts in the spikelets of grasses: the lemma and palea.

In grasses, two bracts known as "glumes" form the lowermost organs of a spikelet (there are usually two but one is sometimes reduced; or rarely, both are absent). Glumes may be similar in form to the lemmas, the bracts at the base of each floret.