[6] After studying agriculture in France, sponsored by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Aaronsohn worked in Metulla, then a new colony in the north of the country.

[7] Together with a member of the German Templer community he launched a business for importing and selling agricultural machines such as reapers, harrows and combine harvesters using modern marketing methods.

On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, while trekking around the Upper Galilee in the area of Rashaya in what is now Lebanon,[8][9] he discovered Triticum dicoccoides, whom he considered to be the "mother of wheat", an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization.

Geneticists have proven that wild emmer is indeed an ancestor of most domesticated wheat strands cultivated on a large scale today[1] with the exception of einkorn, a different ancient species, which is currently just a relict crop.

This discovery made Aaronsohn world-famous and, on a trip to the United States, he was able to secure financial backing for a research station established in Atlit in 1909.

He recommended the plan of attack through Beersheba that General Edmund Allenby ultimately used to take Jerusalem in December 1917 as part of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign.

Owing to information supplied by Nili to the British Army concerning the locations of oases in the desert, General Allenby was able to mount a surprise attack on Beersheba, bypassing strong Ottoman defenses in Gaza.

While there, Aaronsohn learned that the Ottoman authorities had intercepted a Nili carrier pigeon, which led to the arrest and torture of his sister Sarah and other members of the underground.