The only company in Russia today that cultivates einkorn is located in Stavropol and belongs to Irina Vasilyevna Minina, My Dream LLC. Irina Vasilyevna began to study this ancient cereal due to her passion for decorative bouquets of dried flowers, for which she was looking for interesting cereals. Specialists from N. I. Vavilov All-Russian Institute of Plant Genetic Resources (VIR) provided her with a collection of wheat samples, among which Einkorn stood out, and at an exhibition in Nuremberg, the CEO of one German company advised her to take up this wheat variety and gave her several grams of this cereal, emphasizing its unique healing properties. Growing einkorn turned out to be easy, although it was not without difficulties: one day, agronomists mistakenly treated the field with a harsh herbicide, destroying the collection on two hectares, which resulted in the loss of 6 years of work and the need to start from scratch. Irina Vasilyevna is also experimenting with other types of wheat, such as Polish and Turanian (Khorasan), and dreams of growing tiger groundnut (chufa), which produces oil superior in quality to olive oil. |