Khapli atta means emmer wheat flour: wheat in Hindi, Tamil and more

Khapli is the grain and khapli atta is the flour made from it. Both are trade names, the ones COWBERRY's own grain and flour are sold under. The names with a record behind them are these:

Khapli wheat meaning, in one line: emmer, a hulled wheat that is botanically distinct from the bread wheat in ordinary atta, nuttier in taste, and not gluten-free.

Khapli in English is emmer wheat, or simply emmer. It is a hulled wheat: after threshing, each kernel stays inside a tough husk and has to be pounded or milled free, unlike bread wheat, whose naked grain falls out of the ear. Botanists write it as Triticum dicoccum; the University of Sydney GI database lists its one emmer food, an Italian emmer pasta, under exactly that name, and the 2023 grain-composition study in Foods compares bread wheat, emmer and spelt as three separate wheats.

Emmer and bread wheat carry different botanical names, Triticum dicoccum and Triticum aestivum, because they are separate species, not two varieties of one wheat. A 2017 paper in Plant Science compared domesticated emmer and barley with their wild ancestors and suggested that domestication moved both towards bigger grains with relatively more starch and less protein, fibre and minerals, useful background to 'ancient grain' claims. Whether those claims hold for khapli, and which of them have numbers behind them, is examined on khapli wheat benefits.

IFCT 2017 has no emmer entry at all, and none of this page's other sources records an Indian-language word for emmer; nothing has been guessed. The local names IFCT prints for whole wheat, which is bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), are simply the words for wheat, and the table below gives them: godhi in Kannada, godhumalu in Telugu, godumai in Tamil, gehun in Hindi and Urdu, gehu in Marathi, ghaun in Gujarati and kanak in Punjabi. So the honest answer to khapli wheat in Kannada is that there is no separate Kannada name on record. Wheat is godhi, and the grain goes by its trade name, khapli, as COWBERRY's does.

One caution: a word for wheat on a pack does not tell you the species. If a seller uses a local name for a khapli product, ask whether the grain is emmer (Triticum dicoccum) or a bread-wheat variety; the grains it can be confused with are in the next section.

Source: IFCT 2017 (ICMR-NIN) local-names list. — means no name recorded in the source.

• Sharbati: ordinary bread wheat (Triticum aestivum), the wheat behind regular atta, and a different species from khapli.
• Spelt: another wheat altogether. The 2023 study in Foods analysed spelt, emmer and bread wheat as three separate cereal types, so spelt flour is not khapli atta.
• Farro: the one name here that may or may not mean emmer; the farro question at the end of this page explains why.
• Dalia (broken wheat): a form, not a variety: any wheat cracked coarsely. Khapli dalia is khapli; ordinary dalia is bread wheat.
• Millets: khapli is sometimes shelved with jowar and bajra as a healthy grain, but it is a wheat with gluten, and they are not.

For how khapli stacks up against the regular atta in your kitchen on gluten, GI, nutrition, taste and cost, see khapli wheat vs normal wheat.

COWBERRY's khapli comes from the Deccan plateau, from farms in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh that farm organically with cow-based manure, intercropping and crop rotation and harvest the crop by hand once it has ripened naturally. None of the sources behind this page maps where else in India khapli is grown, so no list of states is given here. Being a hulled wheat, it has to be dehulled after harvest, a step ordinary bread wheat skips.

For the atta, COWBERRY grinds the grain slowly in a stone chakki, keeping the whole grain in the flour. How the grain is used, stored and bought is covered on the khapli atta guide, and the two everyday recipes are khapli atta roti and khapli atte ka halwa.

What is khapli wheat?

Khapli wheat is emmer (Triticum dicoccum), a hulled wheat. It is not a variety of the bread wheat used for regular atta but a species of its own. English speakers call it emmer, Indian shops call it khapli, and its flour, khapli atta, makes soft, nutty rotis. Being a wheat, it contains gluten.

What is khapli wheat flour?

Khapli wheat flour, or khapli atta, is whole khapli (emmer) grain ground with the bran and germ. It is coarser and slightly darker than sharbati atta, smells sweet and nutty, and goes into roti, paratha, puri, halwa and baking like regular atta, though the dough wants a little more water and a longer rest.

What is khapli wheat called in Kannada?

No separate Kannada name for it is on record. IFCT 2017 has no emmer entry, and its Kannada word godhi covers wheat in general. The grain is sold under its trade name, khapli, COWBERRY's included; if a shop uses some other local name, check that the pack says emmer or Triticum dicoccum.

Is khapli wheat the same as farro?

Not necessarily. USDA FoodData Central has a record for 'Farro, pearled' that does not name the species, and none of this page's sources says every farro is emmer. Khapli is emmer, Triticum dicoccum, so a farro pack that names that species holds the same grain; one that does not leaves the species open.

Is khapli wheat gluten free?

No. Khapli is emmer, and emmer is a wheat, one of the three gluten cereals on the NHS coeliac disease page alongside barley and rye. Whatever name it is sold under, it does not belong in the gluten-free diet the NHS advises for coeliac disease. For gluten-free rotis, turn to jowar, bajra or ragi, which ICAR's millets research institute describes as gluten free.