Forgotten wheat

Nearly all the wheat we grow in the UK is of one species, the hexaploid Triticum aestivum.  Spelt is also a hexaploid and sometimes regarded as a sub-species, but is fully crossable with T. aestivum bread or common wheat.

Tetraploid wheat, Triticum turgidum, includes durum (pasta), rivet, emmer and Khorasan wheat.  Of these, emmer was grown in the UK in the Bronze and Iron Ages and rivet from late Anglo Saxon times until the 1940s.  Durum wheat is grown in the South East, but is not well adapted to wet summers, most pasta being produced from durum grown in North America.

Could tetraploid wheats have a role in UK agriculture again, especially in light of the interest in 'ancient grains' ?

I tried a plot of Khorasan wheat last summer (sold under the trade name Kamut), but it really didn't get on well in the wet Shropshire summer of 2015. 

Khorasan wheat June 2015

The plants didn't tiller at all so the crop was very thin.  In its favour, it did mature far earlier than conventional spring wheat, at the same time as spring barley, and it did produce the distinctive hump-backed very large hard grains of Khorasan.  An idea I plan to try this year is a naked barley and Khorasan wheat intercrop, similar to that used in Eritrea as 'hanfets', to take advantage of the equal maturity.  Also the canopies should be complementary, barley being dense at the base with a small flag leaf, Khorasan being very open at the base with a large flag leaf.  If the idea works the Khorasan ears will over-top the barley and ripen in the sun without shading the barley too much, which will make use of the light getting through the sparse Khorasan canopy.

Khorasan x Rivet F2

I've also made a cross between rivet and Khorasan.  English rivet is better adapted to wetter summers, with graceful curving upper stems and ears that nod right over to let water run off.  Its disadvantage is that it is very slow developing, traditionally being the first wheat sown in autumn and the last to harvest.  The cross with Khorasan should speed it up somewhat and allow me to develop a spring rivet to mix with the naked barley if the hanfets idea works.