Black, green, coffee-brown..., the wheat is of various colors. The wheat is not only eatable but can also be used for healthcare.

Recently, many experts for seed-breeding, food-processing entrepreneurs and farmers had a chance to have their eyes opened at the seed-breeding base and selecting farm cultivated by experts in Wancheng District, Nanyang City, Henan Province.

In this seed-breeding base and selecting farm, there grow around 13.4 hectares (33 acres) of colored wheat.

According to Zhou Zhongpu, a seed-breeding expert, a research fellow, he together with his assistants cultivated the colored wheat by resorting to a "three-in-one" method, namely chemical and physical induced changes and by distant hydridization as well.

It took them more than 10 years of arduous endeavor to turn out the colored wheat and to date on this globe, it can be found only in Henan. In the colored wheat, it contains many such trace elements as iodine, selenium, calcium, iron and zinc, etc. which is better for healthcare as compared to the ordinary wheat.

Up to now the base has developed an amount of black and green wheat with the purple, blue and jadeite colored wheat still being selected and it presents a bright vista in the market.

As learned, the trace elements in the edible flour in the USA are added in when being processed while the colors in the wheat cultivated by experts in Nanyang are the natural produce.

(People's Daily June 20, 2002)