After studying agriculture in France, sponsored by
French Baron
Edmond de Rothschild, Aaronsohn worked in
Metulla, then a new colony in the north of the country. Together with a member of the
German Templer community he launched a business for importing and selling agricultural machines such as reapers, harrows and combine harvesters using modern marketing methods. Another company he established sold gasoline-operated pumps, a centrifuge for separating cream and making butter, and fertilizers. He also imported different varieties of seeds and vines. he discovered
Triticum dicoccoides, whom he considered to be the "mother of wheat", an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization.
Geneticists have proven that wild
emmer is indeed an ancestor of most domesticated wheat strands cultivated on a large scale today Aaronsohn served as a scientific consultant to
Djemal Pasha during a crop-destroying
desert locust invasion in 1915. In March–October of that year, the locusts stripped the country of almost all vegetation. Aaronsohn and the team fighting the locust invasion was given permission to move around the area known as Southern Syria (including modern day Israel) and made detailed maps of the areas they surveyed. Aaronsohn also collected strategic information about Ottoman camps and troop deployment. In 1918, Aaronsohn was one of the experts consulted for the purpose of demarcating the northern boundary of Palestine, focusing on the need for irrigation water. He envisaged a boundary that would assure the inclusion of the sources of the Jordan, Litani and Yarmuk rivers. His approach became the official Zionist baseline presented to the Peace Conference in Paris in February 1919. ==Political activity and espionage==