Triticale in the context of "Gluten"

A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize (corn). Edible grains from other plant families, such as amaranth, buckwheat and quinoa, are pseudocereals. Most cereals are annuals, producing one crop from each planting, though rice is sometimes grown as a perennial. Winter varieties are hardy enough to be planted in the autumn, becoming dormant in the winter, and harvested in spring or early summer; spring varieties are planted in spring and harvested in late summer. The term cereal is derived from the name of the Roman goddess of grain crops and fertility, Ceres.

Cereals were domesticated in the Neolithic around 8,000 years ago. Wheat and barley were domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. Rice and some millets were domesticated in East Asia, while sorghum and other millets were domesticated in West Africa. Maize was domesticated by Indigenous peoples of the Americas in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. In the 20th century, cereal productivity was greatly increased by the Green Revolution. This increase in production has accompanied a growing international trade, with some countries producing large portions of the cereal supply for other countries.

Rye (Secale cereale) is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is grown principally in an area from Eastern and Northern Europe into Russia. It is much more tolerant of cold weather and poor soil than other cereals, making it useful in those regions; its vigorous growth suppresses weeds and provides abundant forage for animals early in the year. It is a member of the wheat tribe (Triticeae) which includes the cereals wheat and barley. It is likely that rye arrived in Europe as a secondary crop, meaning that it was a minor admixture in wheat as a result of Vavilovian mimicry, and was only later cultivated in its own right.

Rye grain is used for bread, beer, rye whiskey, and animal fodder. In Scandinavia, rye was a staple food in the Middle Ages, and rye crispbread remains a popular food in the region. Europe produces around half of the world's rye; relatively little is traded between countries. A wheat-rye hybrid, triticale, combines the qualities of the two parent crops and is produced in large quantities worldwide. In European folklore, the Roggenwolf ("rye wolf") is a carnivorous corn demon or Feldgeist.

Somatic fusion, also called protoplast fusion, is a type of genetic modification in plants by which two distinct species of plants are fused together to form a new hybrid plant with the characteristics of both, a somatic hybrid. Hybrids have been produced either between different varieties of the same species (e.g. between non-flowering potato plants and flowering potato plants) or between two different species (e.g. between wheat Triticum and rye Secale to produce Triticale).

Uses of somatic fusion include developing plants resistant to disease, such as making potato plants resistant to potato leaf roll disease. Through somatic fusion, the crop potato plant Solanum tuberosum – the yield of which is severely reduced by a viral disease transmitted on by the aphid vector – is fused with the wild, non-tuber-bearing potato Solanum brevidens, which is resistant to the disease. The resulting hybrid has the chromosomes of both plants and is thus similar to polyploid plants.Somatic hybridization was first introduced by Carlson et al. in Nicotiana glauca.