Wheat in heat: the 'crazy idea' that could combat food insecurity

Durum wheat varieties can withstand 40C heat along the Senegal River basin, and could produce 600,000 tonnes of food
In the northern Senegalese village of Ndiayene Pendao, close to the border with Mauritania, Fatouma Sow is pulling weeds. Her team of female farmers tread carefully among the tall, ripening plants as they prepare to harvest the country’s first ever crop of durum wheat.
They had grown onions and tomatoes on the one-hectare plot (2.47 acres), Sow explains, but the crops took t