Italy tests climate-resistant wheat as pasta's future hangs on heat

In the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy's "Food Valley," researchers are creating the pasta of the future by focusing on its main ingredient, wheat, according to a France 24 report aired this week. The project comes as a fourth heatwave of the summer pushes temperatures in parts of Italy close to 40C, with all 27 major cities placed under the highest heat alert, the Guardian reported on Wednesday.

The work is a direct response to a changing climate that is testing the Mediterranean's traditional grain lands. Durum wheat, the hard variety used for pasta, is particularly sensitive to heat stress during its grain-filling phase, and the hotter, drier summers now common across southern Europe are cutting yields and altering protein content.

The France 24 dispatch, filmed in Emilia-Romagna, shows researchers focusing on the genetic traits that allow wheat to survive higher temperatures and reduced water. The region, which produces some of Italy's most prized pasta and hosts the headquarters of several major food companies, has become a laboratory for adapting the crop to conditions that scientists expect to become the norm.

The implications extend far beyond the Po Valley. Sicily, where durum wheat has been cultivated since antiquity and where the climate is already hotter and more arid than the mainland, stands to be among the first regions affected by the shift. The island's interior, which depends on rain-fed agriculture, has seen repeated drought years that have forced farmers to abandon fields or switch to less water-intensive crops.

The Italian government has placed all of its 27 major cities, from Trieste in the north to Palermo in the south, under the highest heat alert as the fourth heatwave of the summer intensifies, the Guardian reported. The red alert, the highest level on the Italian health ministry's scale, warns of conditions that can pose a risk to the whole population, not just the elderly or unwell.

The wheat research in Emilia-Romagna is part of a wider European effort to secure food supplies as climate change reshapes agriculture. Similar programs are underway in Spain, Greece and other Mediterranean countries, where the same heat and drought pressures are forcing a rethink of what can be grown and where.

For Sicily, the stakes are immediate. The island's pasta industry, built on a centuries-old tradition of durum wheat cultivation, faces a future in which the crop may no longer thrive in its ancestral home. The research in Emilia-Romagna offers one possible answer, but it also raises questions about the cost and availability of new seed varieties for smaller farmers in the south.

The heatwave that has put Italy on alert is part of a broader European pattern. The heat has set a national temperature record in Austria, fueled wildfires in France and disrupted energy and transportation systems across the continent, CBS News reported. The same conditions that are driving the search for hardier wheat are also straining the infrastructure that delivers food to Italian tables.