Botanists and experts in the field have determined that emmer wheat underwent a long-term domestication process in which wild, semi-domesticated, and domesticated plant types grew side by side, resulting in continuing introgression (introduction of new genetic material through interbreeding) from the wild populations and possibly gene flow from trans-specific sources—that is, from species other than wheat. By the time Lehi left Jerusalem, wheat and the bread made from it fed the world as he would have known it, and he certainly would have brought those seeds with him, as well as barley.
The seeds certainly could have remained viable and survived the journey, which took from 8 to 10 years—such viability being determined by seed moisture content and storage temperature. At 8% to 9% moisture content insects do not attack the seeds, and below 4% to 5% moisture content, the seeds are immune from insects and fungus. In addition, wheat and barley grains have sufficient longevity, even under less-than-ideal storage conditions, to survive for more than a decade.
It should also be kept in mind, that the seeds Lehi brought with him would have been those he and his four sons grew and harvested at his home “at Jerusalem.” By the time they arrived in the Land of Promise and began “to till the earth, and we began to plant seeds; yea, we did put all our seeds into the earth, which we had brought from the land of Jerusalem. And it came to pass that they did grow exceedingly” (1 Nephi 18:24), these seeds were already highly domesticated.
Over the next 1000 years, the cultivation and domestication of these crops would make them incapable of survival in the wild once the Nephites had been annihilated. This is because the very morphological changes that make a plant a good domesticate also inhibit its ability to compete in the wild and thus tie the survival of the plant to the activities of humans.
The fact is, cultivated barley and cultivated wheat, after ripening, stay intact rather than split or shatter and disperse seeds because of their non-brittle ears. This, of course, allows the grain to be harvested and hauled to the threshing floor and not lost in the field. However, this very advantage of the plant inhibits its wild growth for it has no ability to spontaneously and widely disperse its seeds in the wild. Thus, the Nephite crops after they were gone would die out if they were not planted, tended, harvested, and stored.
In ancient Israel, while produce was stored in pottery jars, they generally stored their grain in pits. Before this grain reached the pit, however, it was harvested (reaped or picked), transported to the threshing floor, dried, threshed (to separate the grain from the stalks), winnowed and sieved (to separate the grain from the chaff), and then measured—a back-breaking, time-consuming task. It is not the type of thing the Lamanites were ever known to have done and certainly is not the type of labor a lazy people (Mosiah 9:12) would do, or one used to hunting in the wilderness for their food (Enos 1:20). If they wanted crops, they stole them (Mosiah 9:14).As has already been pointed out, the Lamanites, who traditionally did not practice agriculture, continued in their wars that were "exceedingly fierce among themselves" (Moroni 1:2). Moroni's observation suggests that the culture continued to be unstable even after the Nephites became extinct. Highly domesticated plants like wheat and barley would not have survived the neglect that accompanied so many years of war and political upheaval.
Based on all this, it is understandable why the Spanish did not see any wheat or barley being grown in the Americas.
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