Donna Green, age 9, of Asheville, N.C., for her question:

WHERE DID WHEAT COME FROM?

No one knows where or when wheat was first used as food. But we know it was used more than 6,000 years ago in a land then called Mesopotamia, which is now Iraq.

We also know wheat was an important food in ancient Palestine and Egypt and that the Greeks grew it about 300 B.C. Wheat was also grown in China before the time of Christ.

Columbus brought wheat to the Western Hemisphere when he returned to the West Indies in 1493. Cortes took wheat from Spain to Mexico in 1519 and the missionaries took it from Mexico into what is now California.

As early as 1602 the colonists grew wheat at Jamestown, Va., and the Pilgrims planted it when they started Plymouth Colony.