Like einkorn (T. monococcum) and spelt (T. spelta), emmer is a hulled wheat, meaning it has strong glumes (husks) that enclose the grains, and a semibrittle rachis.

On threshing, a hulled wheat spike breaks up into spikelets that require milling or pounding to release the grains from the glumes.

During the course of alternating stages of daytime drying and nighttime humidity, the awns' pumping movements, which resemble a swimming frog kick, will drill the spikelet 25 millimetres (1 inch) or more into the soil.

[9] The botanists Friedrich August Körnicke and Aaron Aaronsohn in the late 19th-century were the first to describe the wild emmer native to Palestine and adjacent countries.

[13] Although cultivated in ancient Egypt, wild emmer has not been grown for human consumption in recent history,[11] perhaps owing to the difficulty with which the chaff is separated from the seed kernels, formerly requiring the spikes to be pounded with mortar and pestle.

[14] Wild emmer is native to the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, growing in the grass and woodland of hill country from modern-day Israel to Iran.

The origin of wild emmer has been suggested, without universal agreement among scholars, to be the Karaca Dağ mountain region of southeastern Turkey.

In 1906, Aaron Aaronsohn's discovery of wild emmer wheat growing in Rosh Pinna (Israel) created a stir in the botanical world.

Grains of wild emmer discovered at Ohalo II had a radiocarbon dating of 17,000 BC and at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) site of Netiv Hagdud are 10,000–9,400 years old.

[17] Definitive evidence for the full domestication of emmer wheat is not found until the Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (10,200 to 9,500 BP), at sites such as Beidha, Tell Ghoraifé, Tell es-Sultan (Jericho), Abu Hureyra, Tell Halula, Tell Aswad and Cafer Höyük.

[19] In the Near East, in southern Mesopotamia in particular, cultivation of emmer wheat began to decline in the Early Bronze Age, from about 3000 BC, and barley became the standard cereal crop.

Its value lies in its ability to give good yields on poor soils, and its resistance to fungal diseases such as stem rust that are prevalent in wet areas.

Emmer is grown in Armenia, Morocco, Spain (Asturias), the Carpathian mountains on the border of Czechia and Slovakia, Albania, Turkey, Switzerland, Germany, Greece and Italy.

In the mountainous Garfagnana area of Tuscany emmer (one of three grains known as farro) is grown by farmers as an IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) product, with its geographic identity protected by law.

[37] As with all varieties and hybrids of wheat,[38] emmer is unsuitable for people with gluten-related disorders, despite the popular claim that ancient grains contain less gluten.