Jawahir Wheat Brings Drought Resilience to Morocco

Durum wheat is a staple of Moroccan diets and crucial for national food security. Although Moroccan farmers have managed to produce cereal with limited water for centuries, repeated droughts over the past decade have made it increasingly difficult for cereal farming families to grow enough.

A Jewel from the Wild

Jawahir, Arabic for “jewels,” is a durum wheat variety bred to withstand drought. Developed with genetic material from Triticum araraticum, a wild relative of durum wheat preserved in ICARDA’s genebank, Jawahir was released in Morocco in 2023 by the National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).

The variety is the product of more than a decade of research and field testing carried out by ICARDA and INRA with support from the Crop Trust’s Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods, and Development (BOLD) Project, funded by the Government of Norway. BOLD works globally to conserve crop diversity and turn it into practical solutions for farmers. conserve crop diversity and turn it into practical solutions for farmers.

“Wild plants, which have survived millennia of extreme climatic conditions without the help of farmers, contain traits that can help us build resilient crops capable of withstanding the pressures of today’s climate crisis,” explains Dr. Benjamin Kilian, Senior Scientist at the Crop Trust.