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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 481
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 481 – PASSAGE – 1
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 481
READING PASSAGE – 1
Wheat
A. Wheat is a grass extensively cultured for its seed, a cereal grain which is a global staple food. The numerous species of wheat collected make up the genus Triticum; the most broadly grown is common wheat. The archaeological record proposes that wheat was initially cultivated in the areas of the Fertile Crescent around 9600 BCE. Botanically, the wheat kernel is a type of fruit called a caryopsis.
B. Wheat is cultivated on more land area than any other food crop (220.4 million hectares, 2014). World trade in wheat is superior than for all other crops combined. In 2017, world manufacture of wheat was 772 million tonnes, with a prediction of 2019 production at 766 million tonnes, making it the second most-produced cereal after maize.
Since 1960, world production of wheat and other grain crops has triplicated and is projected to grow more through the middle of the 21st century. Global demand for wheat is growing due to the exceptional viscoelastic and adhesive properties of gluten proteins, which simplify the production of processed foods, whose consumption is growing because of the worldwide industrialization process and the westernization of the diet.
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C. Wheat is an imperative source of carbohydrates. Worldwide, it is the chief foundation of vegetable protein in human food, having a protein content of about 13%, which is comparatively high associated to other major cereals but comparatively low in protein quality for providing vital amino acids. When eaten as the whole grain, wheat is a source of multiple nutrients and dietary fibre. In a minor part of the general population, gluten the main part of wheat protein – can activate coeliac disease, nonceliac gluten sensitivity, gluten ataxia, and dermatitis herpetiformis.
D. Cultivation and recurrent harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses led to the formation of domestic strains, as mutant forms (‘sports’) of wheat were differently selected by farmers. In domesticated wheat, grains are bigger, and the seeds (inside the spikelets) endure attached to the ear by a toughened rachis throughout harvesting. In wild strains, a delicate rachis permits the ear to effortlessly break and scatter the spikelets.
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Selection for these characters by farmers might not have been purposely intended, but merely have happened because these traits made congregation the seeds easier; however, such ‘incidental’ selection was an imperative part of crop domestication. As the traits that advance wheat as a food source also include the loss of the plant’s natural seed dispersion mechanisms, highly domesticated strains of wheat cannot endure in the wild.
E. Cultivation of wheat commenced to spread beyond the Fertile Crescent after about 8000 BCE. Jared Diamond traces the spread of cultivated emmer wheat opening in the Fertile Crescent sometime before 8800 BCE. Archaeological analysis of wild emmer specifies that it was first cultured in the southern Levant, with finds dating back as far as 9600 BCE.
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Genetic analysis of wild einkorn wheat proposes that it was first grown in the Karacadag Mountains in south eastern Turkey. Dated archaeological leftovers of einkorn wheat in settlement sites near this region, counting those at Abu Hureyra in Syria, proposes the domestication of einkorn near the Karacadag Mountain Range. With the irregular exception of two grains from Iraq ed-Dubb, the most primitive carbon-14 date for einkorn wheat remains at Abu Hureyra is 7800 to 7500 years BCE.
F. Remains of harvested emmer from several sites near the Karacadag Range have been dated to between 8600 (at Cayonu) and 8400 BCE (Abu Hureyra), that is, in the Neolithic period. Except for Iraq ed-Dubb, the earliest carbon-14 dated remains of domesticated emmer wheat were initiated in the earliest levels of Tell Aswad, in the Damascus basin, near Mount Hermon in Syria. These remnants were dated by Willem van Zeist and his assistant Johanna Bakker-Heeres to 8800 BCE. They also determined that the settlers of Tell Aswad did not grow this form of emmer themselves but brought the domesticated grains with them from a yet anonymous location somewhere else.
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G. The cultivation of emmer stretched Greece, Cyprus and Indian subcontinent by 6500 BCE, Egypt soon after 6000 BCE, and Germany and Spain by 5000 BCE. “The early Egyptians were inventers of bread and the use of the oven and advanced baking into one of the first large-scale food production industries.” By 3000 BCE, wheat had grasped the British Isles and Scandinavia. A millennium later it grasped China.
The eldest evidence for hexaploid wheat has been confirmed through DNA analysis of wheat seeds, dating to about 6400-6200 BCE, improved from Çatalhöyük. The first distinguishable bread wheat with adequate gluten for yeasted breads has been recognized using DNA analysis in samples from a granary dating to about 1350 BCE at Assiros in Macedonia.
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H. From Asia, wheat sustained to spread across Europe. In the British Isles, wheat straw (thatch) was used for roofing in the Bronze Age and was in common use till the late 19th century. Technological advances in soil preparation and seed location at planting time, use of crop rotation and fertilizers to advance plant growth, and advances in harvesting procedures have all combined to encourage wheat as a viable crop. When the use of seed drills substituted broadcasting sowing of seed in the 18th century, another great upsurge in productivity happened.
I. Yields of pure wheat per unit area augmented as methods of crop rotation were applied to long cultivated land, and the use of fertilizers became extensive. Enhanced agricultural husbandry has more lately comprised threshing machines and reaping machines (the ‘combine harvester’), tractor-drawn cultivators and planters, and better diversities. Great extension of wheat production occurred as new arable land was farmed in the Americas and Australia in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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Questions 1-9
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write correct letter A-I in your answer sheet.
NB you may use any letter more than once
1. Low in protein quality and high in carbohydrates.
2. The initiation and spread of wheat cultivation.
3. A global prime food.
4. Spread of wheat from Asia to Europe.
5. Increasing use of fertilizer and crop rotation methods helping in the escalation of the yield of wheat.
6. Creators of bread.
7. Evidence of emmer harvest in different areas.
8. Gardening and regular harvesting and sowing of the grains of wild grasses.
9. Figures regarding the cultivation of wheat crops around the world.
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Questions 10-14
Write the correct date/year in the blanks
10. World production of wheat in 2017 was ……….…………….
11. Wheat has a protein content of around ……….…………….
12. Cultivation of wheat began to spread outside the Fertile Crescent after ……….…………….
13. Cultivation of emmer reached Egypt in soon after ……….…………….
14. Sea drills used in the sowing of seeds in ……….…………….
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ANSWERS
1. C
2. E
3. A
4. H
5. I
6. G
7. F
8. D
9. B
10. 772 MILLION TONNES
11. 13%
12. 8000 BCE
13. 6000 BCE
14. 18TH CENTURY
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