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Search - The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest

The Viking in the Wheat Field A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest
Author: Susan Dworkin

The gripping story of how Bent Skovmand and others preserved the world?s wheat harvest. In 1999, a terrifying new form of stem rust—spotted in Uganda and dubbed “UG99?—quickly turned robust golden fields into dark, tangled ruins. For decades plant scientists had bred wheat varieties with rust-resistant genes, but these gene... more »s did not work against UG99. Unchecked, UG99 could spread all over the world, including the United States. Breeders everywhere began searching wheat germplasm collections for sources of resistance. The largest collection was at the Center for Improvement of Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT ) in Mexico, developed by the brilliant Danish scientist Bent Skovmand. For three decades, Skovmand amassed, multiplied, and documented thousands of wheat varieties. He served as an advisor on wheat genetic resources to dozens of countries, and hunted for seeds that would contain the genes to protect the harvest from plagues like UG99 and the stresses created by global warming. I n an era when corporations and governments often jealously guarded breeding information, Skovmand fought to keep his seed bank a center for free, open scientific exchange. By telling the story of Skovmand?s work and that of his colleagues, The Viking in the Wheat Field sheds a welcome light on an agricultural sector—“plant genetic resources?—on which we are all crucially dependent. Susan Dworkin has written several biographies, including The Nazi Officer?s Wife, and her articles have appeared in Ms., Cosmopolitan, and numerous magazines. Her fascination with agriculture dates from early stints at the United States Department of Agriculture and as a journalist covering aid programs in the Middle East. She lives in New York City and the Berkshires. In 1999, a terrifying new form of stem rust—spotted in Uganda and dubbed "Ug99"—began turning robust golden fields into dark, tangled ruins. For decades plant scientists had bred wheat varieties with rust-resistant genes, but against Ug99, they were helpless. The disease's spores blew on the wind through Kenya to Iran, heading for India and Pakistan, where fifty million small farmers produce 20 percent of the global wheat supply. Unless stopped, the disease would threaten China, the world's largest wheat producer, and America's rich wheat fields. Breeders everywhere began searching seed collections for strains of wheat that were genetically resistant to Ug99. The largest collection was at the Center for Improvement of Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT ) in Mexico, developed by the brilliant Danish scientist Bent Skovmand. For thirty years, Skovmand amassed, multiplied, and documented thousands of wheat varieties. From the parched hillsides of Mexico and the vast central plains of Turkey to the sly-high pastures of Tibet, he trekked the world's fields to consult with local farmers and discover new strains of wheat. Serving as advisor to dozens of countries, he identified seeds with genes that could resist plagues like Ug99 and environmental disasters such as drought and flooding. In an era when corporations and governments often jealously guarded breeding information, Skovmand fought to keep his seed bank a center for free, open scientific exchange as a service to breeders and farmers everywhere .Recognizing his extraordinary service to mankind, Time magazine in 1991 said Skovmand had had "more to do with the welfare of the world's five billion people than many heads of state." The Viking in the Wheat Field tells a hidden, but heroic, story of scientists—Skovmand chief among them—for whom increasing the world's food supply has been nothing less than a life's calling. Susan Dworkin takes us inside the world of grain breeding, where plants forensics and genetic breakthroughs bump up against politics and bottom lines, and the stakes are nothing less than the security of our food supply. The Viking in the Wheat Field is a story of passion, commitment, and scientific discovery molded by the life of an extraordinary public servant. "An eye-opening look into the little-known world of gene banks and crop breeding, and a poignant reminder that the real guardians of our food security are not armies or transnational corporations but a handful of tireless scientists who have labored for decades to keep us one step ahead of famine."—Rowan Jacobsen, author of Fruitless Fall: the Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis "Susan Dworkin has found a delightful way to tell the alarming story of the frailty of the global wheat crop. She leads us expertly and enthusiastically into Bent Skovmand's strange, infrequently penetrated domain of plant breeding and internatonal seed banks, a world in whch unsung scientists search and save exotic plant germplasm to protect the staffs of live against pests, plagues and corporate raiders. As the Viking himself warns in Dworkin's book: 'If the seeds disappear, so could your food. So could you.'"—Peter Pringle, author of Food, Inc.: Mendel to Monsanto—The Promises and Perils of the Biotech Harvest and The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov "Illuminating biography of Bent Skovmand (1945-2007), a prescient Scandinavian scientist who devoted his career to amassing, categorizing and genetically developing a global seed bank that could save the world from famine. Journalist Dworkin (The Nazi Officer's Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust) frames the story of Skovmand's life with the 1999 outbreak of a new strain of stem rust, 'Ug99,' which decimated fields across the globe. Ug99 demonstrated to farmers and researchers everywhere the importance of 'plant genetic resources,' Skovmand's life work. Developments in cross-breeding and selective gene modification enable geneticists to create varieties of seeds that have built-in resistance to biological predators. When a strain like Ug99 emerges, researchers turn to germplasm, or seed, collections—like the one at the Center for Improvement of Maize and Wheat (CIMMYT) in Mexico, where Skovmand worked for close to 30 years—to find the one genetic variation that is capable of resisting it. Then they breed it and provide it to farmers worldwide. Isolating the exact kind of wheat that contains the specific gene required is painstaking work that requires patience, persistence and total dedication. Skovmand possesses these qualities in abundance, and with a fiery passion for feeding the world's hungry, he was an able advocate and technician. He worked tirelessly against the encroaching bureaucracy for fieldwork funding and a free global exchange of ideas and seeds. But years passed without a protected and inventoried global germplasm collection, and local collections in Iraq, Syria, Mexico and elsewhere were compromised by a lack of resources, war or natural disaster. Not until recently did the political community admit the need for a global seed bank, and in February 2008 the Svalbard Doomsday Vault opened in northern Norway, housing millions of carefully protected seeds. In vivid language, Dworkin presents Skovmand's legacy as ample reason for a new generation of genetic researchers to take the cause."—Kirkus Reviews

ISBN-13: 9780802717405
ISBN-10: 0802717403
Publication Date: 11/24/2009
Pages: 256
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Walker & Company
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback
Members Wishing: 1
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