Red Fife is a landrace wheat, meaning there is genetic variability in the wheat that allows it to adapt to a diversity of growing conditions. David Fife developed the variety in 1842 and by the 1860s Red Fife was distributed and growing across Canada, adapting to a broad diversity of growing conditions. Renowned as a fine milling and baking wheat it set Canadian wheat standards for over forty years.

Sonora, a soft white landrace wheat, has a history here in the Southwestern United States, because it is a variety grown early by the agricultural Native Americans in Mexico. They used it to make their whole wheat tortillas, and apparently liked the way it could be ground to a whole wheat flour on their metate. Sonora wheat might be the very first wheat successfully introduced onto the American continent soon after Columbus’s famous journey of discovery in 1492. It was grown in the Southwest continuously until about 1960.