stem rust - Ug99 race

1. SHORT PROFILE OF NORMAN E. BORLAUG (1914 – 2009)
Submitted by M.SIVA (2019-11-131)

2. • Born March 25, 1914 on a farm near Cresco, Iowa to Henry and Clara Borlaug.
Died at 95 on September 12, 2009 in Dallas,North Texas..His wife named Margaret
Gibson
• He obtained initial education in a one-room rural school house. Nels Borlaug,his
grandfather urged him to continue higher studies.
• Borlaug's skills as an athlete (mainly in wrestling) opened the door for him to attend the
University of Minnesota.
• Borlaug received all three of his academic degrees from the University of Minnesota
B.S. in Forestry (1937), and an M.S. (1940) and Ph.D. (1942) from the Department of
Plant Pathology with a minor in plant genetics.
• After Completing B.S in Forestry ,he worked for the U.S. Forestry Service at stations in
Massachusetts and Idaho.
• He was greatly influenced during his graduate work by the famous professor of plant
pathology E. C. Stakman and also by H. K. Hayes, a renowned plant breeder.
• Borlaug worked at DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, from 1942 to 1944. Where he
worked as a Microbiologist until wartime service.

3. • Borlaug’s wheat research started in 1944 with a Rockefeller Foundation-sponsored
program in Mexico.
• In 1948, Borlaug released four dramatically improved varieties—
Kentana 48,
Yaqui 48,
Nazas 48,
Chapingo 48
• All in all he produced at least 40 important wheat varieties
• He obtained the source of the semi-dwarf genes of Rht1 and Rht2 from a variety
called Norin 10 through the experts from Japan.
• He called his disciples - hunger fighters”
• Another major innovation of Borlaug’s wheat breeding program in Mexico became
known as shuttle breeding
• This approach result in developing “day length insensitivity” allowed his wheat
lines to be grown widely across the world, including India and Pakistan, where
millions of people had been starving because of food shortages.

4. • These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed
agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940's and 1950's and later in Asia and
Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution."
• From (1960–63) Borlaug served as director of the Inter-American Food Crop
Program
• With the establishment of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center
(CIMMYT) in Mexico in 1963, Dr. Borlaug assumed leadership (Director)of the
Wheat Program, a position he held until his official retirement in 1979.
• In 1970 Norman E. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of
work to feed a hungry world.
• In 1973 ,criticism about Green Revolution. Critics maintained that the greater use
of inorganic fertilizer required by the Green Revolution varieties would lead to
pollution.
• In 1983, Dr. Borlaug joined as a Distinguished Professor of International Agriculture
at Texas A & M University.
• In 1986,Borlaug created his own prize in agriculture - the World Food Prize (WFP) -
- that he hoped would come to be known as the equivalent of a Nobel Prize.

5. • The prize of $250,000 has now been awarded to many outstanding agriculturalists;
Borlaug chaired the selection committee until his death.
• In 1988, he became President of the Sasakawa Africa Association and a Senior
Consultant to Global 2000.
• From 1990-92, he was a member of the U.S. President’s Council of Advisors for
Science and Technology.
• Long after his official retirement, Borlaug was reinspired to act by another environ-
mental problem - stem rust.
• However, in 1999, a new form of this disease, first identified in Uganda, was found to
be virulent on 80 to 90 percent of the world’s wheat varieties.
• Borlaug recognized the potentially devastating impact of this new strain, called Ug99,
and he alerted policymakers in 2004, when he was 90 years old, in a report titled
“Sounding the alarm on global stem rust.”
• The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a major effort to combat the disease;
now called the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, this program involves scientists from
around the world, and they have made substantial progress in finding resistance.

6. • On March 25, 2012, on his 98th birthday, a bronze life statue of Borlaug was unveiled
at his beloved experiment station near Ciudad Obregon.
• CIMMYT library maintains a list of Borlaug’s publications, issued between 1941 and
2007, which total approximately 500 peer-reviewed articles, reports, and commentaries.
• The book Norman Borlaug on World Hunger (Dil 1997) provides reprints of 32
selected speeches and writings.
• Because of his achievements to prevent hunger, famine and misery around the world, it
is said that Dr. Borlaug has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever
lived."(Phillips 2010)
• Awards :
Nobel Peace Prize (1970)
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977)
Congressional Gold Medal (2007)
National Medal of Science (2006)
50 honorary doctorates

8. The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) is an international consortium of over 1,000
scientists from hundreds of institutions working together.
• To reduce the world’s vulnerability to stem, yellow, and leaf rusts of wheat;
• Facilitate sustainable international partnerships to contain the threat of wheat rusts;
• Enhance world productivity to withstand global threats to wheat security.
Key components of the BGRI:
It include a global wheat community with systems for: cereal rust monitoring and
surveillance; gene discovery; improved testing, multiplication and adoption of
replacement varieties; training and capacity building; understanding non-host resistance
to stem rust; and increasing levels of investments and coordination in wheat rust
research and development.
The BGRI was initiated by ICAR, ICARDA, CIMMYT, UN-FAO and Cornell
University in 2008. It is fostered by the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat project,
which serves as the secretariat.
BGRI

9. • The Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat Project, a collaborative effort begun in April
2008 and ended in 2016, which now includes 22 research institutions around the
world and led by Cornell University,
• It seeks to mitigate rust threats through coordinated activities that will replace
susceptible varieties with durably resistant varieties, created by accelerated
multilateral plant breeding and delivered through optimized developing country seed
sectors.
• The project also aims to harness recent advances in genomics to introduce non-host
resistance (immunity) into wheat.
• Improved international collaboration in wheat research to meet growing world
demand for food—an estimated 50% production increase in wheat alone is needed
by 2020—is another major goal of this project.
• The DRRW is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK
Department for International Development
DRRW

10. Sources of Resistance against Ug99 race
Triticum aestivum
Triticum turgidum
Triticum monococcum
Triticum timopheevi
Aegilops speltoides
Aegilops tauschii
Triticum araraticum
Thinopyrum elongatum
Thinopyrum intermedium
Secale cereale
Resistant varities in India againt Ug99
GW 273
GW 322
HIN 1500
HD 2781
MP 4010
HUW 510
MACS 2846
HI 8498
UP 2338
DL 153-2
HW 1085
Raj 4120
PBW 343