Epilogue to the 20th Century

UMN Plant Pathology's Alumni and Faculty

by Professor Emeritus Richard J. Zeyen

Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota has a rich, impressive history of serving and educating citizens of Minnesota, the nation and the world. It is the nation’s oldest plant pathology graduate program. In the 20th Century the Department awarded 789 graduate degrees, 385 MS degrees, 404 PhD degrees, and a smaller number of undergraduate Plant Health Technology degrees.

 Members of the public are generally unaware of what the scientific discipline of plant pathology does, and the role it plays in science and in global food security. Minnesota’s Plant Pathology alumni had unprecedented impacts on science and society. Their stories provide an excellent study for the importance of plant pathology. 

Department members harnessed the power of science, education and humanitarian efforts to serve not only Minnesota, but all mankind. In the process they pioneered scientific understanding of variability in microorganisms and used this knowledge to improve world food production. Among the best examples were rust disease prevention using genetic resistance in cereal crops. Their efforts helped save hundreds of millions from starvation and/or lives of poverty, malnutrition and misery—and, except for Norman Borlaug, their stories remain largely untold.

The University of Minnesota, however, recognized the strength and quality of Plant Pathology’s faculty and alumni by naming four buildings on the Saint Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota after Minnesota Plant Pathologists.  Those buildings, in alphabetical order, are: 

  • Borlaug Hall
  • Christensen Laboratories
  • Kaufert Laboratories
  • Stakman Hall

 

The Department also produced many leaders in the science of Plant Pathology.  The American Phytopathological Society (APS) has had eleven Departmental alumni and faculty serve as APS presidents through the year 2000.  These were: Edward M. Freeman (1918), Elvin C. Stakman (1922), Jonas J. Christensen (1944), John H. Craige (1946), Helen Hart (1956), Harold H. Flor (1968), Thor Kommedahl (1971), James Tammen (1974), John F. Shafer (1979), Wylie N, Garrett (1981), and Carol Windels (1999).  In the 21st Century, Carol Ishimaru served in 2012. 

In addition, scores of alumni and faculty were elected officers and fellows of various scientific societies, and were highly placed in various nations' governments, in industry, within philanthropic organizations, and in academia. The following are cited for their overall contributions to science and society. They are: Thorvaldur Johnson (PhD 1930), John Craigie (MS 1925), Herman A. Rodenhiser (MS 1925, PhD 1928),  Clyde M. Christensen (MS 1930, PhD 1937), Jonas J. Christensen (MS 1922, PhD 1925), Frank H. Kaufert (MS 1930, PhD 1935), John W. Gibler (PhD 1951), H. D. Thurston (MS 1953, PhD, 1958), and John Dueck (MS 1966, PhD 1971).

Nine Iconic 20th Century Department Alumni & Green Revolution List

Nine truly iconic Minnesota Plant Pathology alumni were chosen for highlighting. They were selected for their extraordinary and lasting impact in the 20th Century and beyond.

Also included below is a list of departmental alumni involved in the Green Revolution. 

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Edward M. Freeman

Department Founder, Rust Diseases Researcher, Intellectual Leader

black and white headshot of E.M. Freeman

The precursor to the modern Department of Plant Pathology was the Division of Vegetable Pathology. It was formed in 1906, and in 1907 Edward M. Freeman was hired as Chief of the Division.

Edward Freeman (a.k.a. Eduard M. Fryman) was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1875. He was the son of Swiss immigrants and attended Saint Paul Central High School. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and in 1898 was awarded a BS degree from the College of Science, Literature and the Arts.  

Freeman enjoyed botany and came under the influence of an iconic botanist, Conway MacMillan. He was interested in plant diseases and completed a Masters degree under MacMillan (1899). He wished to pursue a PhD. However, the University of Minnesota was a young institution and had just awarded its first BS degrees in 1873. It had not yet developed a strong botany graduate program. Thus, in 1900, to gain more depth than Minnesota could then offer, Freeman traveled to the University of Chicago’s Woods Hole Biological Station to study. Then in 1901 he traveled to Cambridge University (England) to study with the renowned plant pathologist H. Marshall Ward.  Professor Ward worked on coffee rust, a disease rivaling wheat stem rust in its economic importance and biological complexity.   

Freeman returned to Minnesota to complete his PhD program. He was an instructor in Botany in 1902 and was an Assistant Professor from 1903 to 1905. He taught laboratory courses in botany, and in the summers worked for the Minnesota Geological and Natural History Survey on a comprehensive identification of Minnesota’s plant diseases. In 1905, the University of Minnesota published his survey work in a book entitled Minnesota Plant Diseases. He received his PhD in Botany in 1905 and was designated as Minnesota’s first Plant Pathology PhD. 

Dr. Freeman was hired as a special agent of the United States Department of Agriculture in the Office of Grain Investigations. He was surveying rust diseases of cereals on the Great Plains when, in 1907, he received a telegram offering him the job of establishing a Vegetable Pathology Unit at the University of Minnesota. What had prompted this offer was the wheat stem rust epidemic of 1904 which was so severe it limited flour milling operations at Saint Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The milling, farming, and railroad businesses demanded action to control wheat stem rust. Minnesota’s United States Senator, Knute Nelson, pushed through an amendment to the federal Morrill Act that gave funding to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to establish a Vegetable Pathology Unit (Plant Pathology) at Minnesota's Land Grant University, the University of Minnesota.

Freeman accepted the offer and was given a one-year leave to finish his USDA work. Freeman returned to the University of Minnesota in 1908 and set to work. He believed the new unit should be a Division of Vegetable Pathology and Botany (Economic Botany) housed in the Department of Agriculture (College of Agriculture) on the Saint Paul Campus (University Farm). Despite rather stiff internal opposition, Freeman’s idea prevailed. Classical Botany remained a separate entity on the Minneapolis Campus. 

Freeman was an exceptional scholar and knew talent. He immediately began recruiting graduate students for the newly formed unit. Some transferred from the Minneapolis Campus, but one student Freeman had previously taught at the University was Elvin C. Stakman. Stakman had graduated and was at the time Superintendent of Schools at Argyle, Minnesota. However, Stakman was inquiring about graduate work. Freeman outbid the German Department and the classical Botany Department for Stakman. Stakman was hired as an instructor in the new Vegetable Pathology unit with only minimal knowledge of plant pathology.

In 1900 white pine blister rust (caused by the fungus Cronartium ribicola) was accidentally introduced into North America. The federal Plant Quarantine Act of 1912 provided funds to try to eradicate the disease. Freeman took up the effort in Minnesota and began locating the fungus’s alternate hosts (Ribes shrubs, such as currants and gooseberries) and planning for their eradication in white pine forest areas. Eradication of Ribes hosts eventually proved to be an insurmountable task, so other measures were employed.   

Freeman was adept at nurturing and mentoring graduate students.  To help graduate students he held regular Thursday evening seminars at his home near the Saint Paul Campus.  These evenings were devoted to “learning together”—no plant pathology textbooks existed, so they reviewed literature pertaining to plant diseases.  Freeman shared his widely varied career experiences, and students shared their experiences in working with their laboratory and field research on plant diseases and the literature they themselves had reviewed.

Freeman was also adept at University administration. He was appointed Assistant Dean of the College of Agriculture in 1913, and in 1917 became Dean of the College of Agriculture, all the while remaining as Chief of the Division of Vegetable Pathology and Botany. Freeman then put Stakman (PhD 1913) in charge of the day-to-day activities of the plant pathology unit and later, when the unit became a Department, Freeman made Stakman Chief of Plant Pathology and eventually Head of the Plant Pathology Department. 

Elvin C. Stakman

International Statesman of Science

black and white headshot of E.C. Stakman

Elvin Charles Stakman (a.k.a. Alvin Charles Stegmann) was born in 1885 on a farm near Algoma, Wisconsin, but grew up in the village of Brownton, Minnesota. When he was very young his parents divorced.  

Elvin and his older sister Edna remained with his mother, Amelia, and her extended family (the Eberharts) in and around Brownton, Minnesota. Elvin was small in stature, quick-witted, and loved learning. His mother and sister encouraged him; both were elementary school teachers. They taught him well. He did the kind of odd jobs that a small boy in a small rural village could do to earn money. He herded cows and worked in the local hardware store. He saved his money and paid a local man to teach him German.

Brownton lacked a high school and Elvin needed a proper education to qualify for entry to the University of Minnesota. Thus, he moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota and stayed with relatives and friends while attending Saint Paul’s Cleveland and Johnson High Schools. After graduation, and with financial help from his mother and sister Edna, he enrolled in the University of Minnesota.  In 1906 he received his BA in Liberal Arts. Following gradution, he taught high school and coached athletics and debate at schools in Red Wing, Mankato, and Argyle, Minnesota. As an athletic coach he was very supportive and very competitive. 

At age 24, Stakman became the superintendent of Argyle schools, but wanted to go on in higher education. In 1909 he was recruited by the Chief of the newly formed Vegetable Pathology Unit (Plant Pathology), Professor Edward Freeman, at the University of Minnesota Farm (now the Saint Paul Campus). Stakman returned to the University to do graduate work in Plant Pathology. He received his MA in 1910 and a PhD in 1913.  

His PhD research concerned proving or disproving Marshall Ward’s Bridging Host Theory for cereal rusts. Stakman discovered multiple physiological races (pathogenic forms) within the wheat stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis). The spores of these forms were morphologically indistinguishable but differed physiologically. His discoveries, written in his 1913 PhD thesis, and reinforced by further research, disproved H. Marshall Ward’s Bridging Host Theory. 

Stakman published his findings in 1915. His physiological races differed in their virulence — their disease-causing capabilities — on wheat varieties. The discovery of physiological races was made by inoculating a series of wheat lines with differing resistances to the rust with isolates of the fungus. These “differential sets” gave researchers the ability to identify pathogenic races by their reactions on wheats, and identify wheat resistance genes effective against rust, providing a scientific basis for disease resistance breeding.

Infections on barberry leaves allow the rust fungus to undergo sexual recombination. The mechanism of sexual recombination on barberry was unproven at the time of Stakman’s physiological race discovery, but overwhelming circumstantial evidence, gathered over more than 100 years in Europe and elsewhere, strongly implicated barberry in pathogenic race formation.  

To slow the evolution of pathogenic races Stakman advocated, along with his many academic and business sector allies, for a national barberry removal program. The advocacy effort was very successful both at the federal and state levels. In 1918 Stakman became the leader of a National Barberry Eradication with the goal of eliminating the common barberry bush in wheat growing areas of 13 US states.  

Stakman headed the National Barberry Eradication Program from his office and laboratories in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota. In 1918, the United States Department of Agriculture established and funded a Cereal Rust Laboratory on the St Paul campus of the University of Minnesota. Stakman was its first leader, but soon passed on daily responsibilities to others.  Eventually 400 million barberry bushes were eradicated from 13 wheat growing states on the Northern Great Plains.

Many Canadian graduate students came to the University of Minnesota to study under Stakman and his colleagues. They formed the nucleus for the Dominion Rust Research Laboratory at the University of Winnipeg. A similar barberry eradication program was started in 1924 in Canada by Agriculture Canada. Thus, both the United States and Canada had closely linked, cooperative, national cereal rust research centers and barberry eradication campaigns on the North American Great Plains. 

Stakman and his students joined a national effort to discover how wheat stem rust, and other cereal rusts, moved up and down the Great Plains. In doing so, they used the tools of aerobiology and cooperated with other Land Grant Universities to determine that rusts moved on wind currents now known as the Puccinia pathway.  

The aerobiology discoveries led to a national effort to monitor stem rust fungus race distributions on the Great Plains in the United States and Canada and to some extent northern Mexico.  This involved cooperation by many plant pathologists at Land Grant Universities on the Great Plains, especially at Kansas State University, and the Dominion Rust Research Laboratory at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. The identification of races for the United States was initially done at the University of Minnesota. Thus, the work of Stakman and his many collaborators led directly to science-based breeding for resistance to stem rust and the other cereal rusts. 

Stakman’s career was spent in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Plant Pathology, though he traveled extensively. He served as a consultant to the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation.  He became inextricably involved with the Rockefeller Program/Government of Mexico project, which eventually became the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo (CIMMT). He was very involved in developing several crop improvement centers throughout the world. These crop improvement centers are now part of the world-wide Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, CGIAR.

Inside the University of Minnesota, Stakman was sometimes referred to as the universal scholar. He was totally devoted to learning. The combination of his unique speaking skills and his grasp of languages, history, science, and general knowledge contributed to his great demand as a speaker. Stakman never accepted a gratuity for these speaking engagements, for he believed that it was his duty to share his knowledge and experiences. 

Stakman mentored both J. George Harrar and Norman Borlaug, and was sometimes referred to as the Godfather of the Green Revolution. 

Stakman served as president of the American Phytopathological Society in 1922 and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1949. As a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation he helped establish the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). He was also a member of the influential Washington D.C. Cosmos Club, and on May 13th, 1964 received The First Cosmos Club Award.

Margaret Newton

Canada’s foremost cereal rust researcher of the early 20th century

black and white headshot of Margaret Newton

Margaret Newton was born on a farm in Western Quebec, Canada, on April 20, 1887 to John Newton and Elizabeth Brown. Her father was a chemist and was interested in the application of chemistry to agriculture. The oldest of five children, she began school in a one-room schoolhouse at North Nation Mills. Newton attended middle school and part of high school in Montreal. After high school, she attended Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute and completed teacher training at the Toronto Normal School. She taught elementary school for three years at Lachine (a borough of Montreal, Canada) while she saved money to attend a university. 

In 1914, after spending a year at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where she studied art, Newton decided to join her brother at Macdonald College, the agricultural and environmental college of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. 

Macdonald College opened in 1907; it was still a “young” college with an almost exclusively male enrollment. Newton was not allowed to take laboratory sessions with male students, but could work in laboratories in the evenings. Her mentor at Macdonald College was Professor William Pollack Fraser, a pioneer in the study of cereal rust diseases. In 1917, Fraser left on a survey of western Canada for cereal rust diseases. Margaret Newton was left at Macdonald College to take charge of the collections that Fraser mailed back, testing the rusts for their host range on grasses.  

Charles Saunders, the Dominion scientist in Ottawa, brought Newton seed of the new, popular spring wheat variety Marquis to test for stem rust resistance. Using isolates of the wheat stem rust fungus from Fraser’s collections, Newton found that these single spore isolates yielded differing infection types on Marquis. Newton and Fraser concluded that the stem rust fungus was genetically variable and was composed of physiological races.  

Thus, Margaret Newton, working independently, demonstrated the presence of physiological races (pathogenic strains), confirming E. C. Stakman’s discovery at the University of Minnesota. She was an exceptional student, and in 1918 she became the first woman awarded a baccalaureate degree in agriculture from McGill University’s Macdonald College. Margaret Newton did not learn of Stakman’s discovery until later when she was doing her MS degree at Macdonald College. The title of her MS thesis was “The Resistance of Wheat Varieties to Puccinia graminis.”

In 1919 William P. Fraser was appointed the head of the newly formed Dominion Laboratory of Plant Pathology at the University of Saskatchewan. At Saskatchewan, Fraser worked closely with Professor W. P. Thomson, a wheat breeder interested in breeding resistance to wheat stem rust. In 1920 Newton joined them at the University of Saskatchewan and was made an Assistant Plant Pathologist. It was there that she first met Stakman, who was collaborating with Fraser and Thompson. Stakman had brought with him to Saskatchewan seeds of his “differential set” of wheat varieties designed to identify physiological races of wheat stem rust. 

Stakman wanted Newton to come to Minnesota as a PhD student, and she wanted to go, but Thomson wanted her to remain in Saskatchewan to assist in creating stem rust resistant wheat varieties. Finally, Stakman and Thompson came to an agreement: Newton would spend 6 months a year working in Saskatchewan and 6 months at the University of Minnesota working on her PhD in Plant Pathology. Newton did just that, and in 1922 she was awarded her PhD in Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota. Margaret Newton, along with fellow student Louise Dosdall, were the first two women to obtain PhD degrees in Plant Pathology from the University of Minnesota. Newton was also the first Canadian woman to receive a PhD in an agricultural discipline. 

Following her PhD, Newton returned to Canada to accept an assistant professorship at the University of Saskatchewan. In 1924, the Canadian government created The Dominion Rust Research Laboratory on the campus of the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 1925 Newton was hired as a research scientist working on physiological races of wheat stem rust. As an inducement, she could choose her own assistant. She selected a former student from Saskatchewan, Thorvalder Johnson, who would receive his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1930.  

Newton had more experience with research on rusts than any member of the staff. She was led the stem rust race surveys for western Canada, in addition to her other research endeavors. She and Johnson conducted landmark genetic studies of the physiological races of Puccinia graminis, and research into the life cycle of the fungus. 

The great Russian plant scientist, Nikolai Vavilov, Director of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences at Leningrad, visited Canada and was very impressed with Newton’s work. He invited her to Russia. In 1930 she visited Leningrad and Vavilov offered her a good salary and additional perks to come to work at his Institute. Newton was flattered but ultimately turned down the position. She did, however, return in 1933 for several months to help train 50 young scientists in research methods. She, like Stakman and many other scientists, was saddened over the imprisonment of Vavilov by Joseph Stalin in Russia, and by Vavilov’s subsequent death by starvation in a concentration camp in eastern Siberia in 1943.

In the early 1940s, Newton’s health began failing. She developed asthma and was apparently allergic to rust spores.  In 1945, she reluctantly retired and moved to the milder climate of Victoria, British Columbia. Thovalder Johnson, her former assistant who had become Head of the Dominion Rust Research Laboratory wrote this about her: “The example she set to anyone who worked with her made the association a privilege, and her generosity and kindliness endeared her to the staff.” At the time of her retirement, she didn’t qualify for a full pension. However, several private sector individuals testified that Newton had “saved Canada millions of dollars by her efforts in controlling cereal rusts.” Thus, an exception was made, and Newton was granted a full pension. 

Newton received many honors during her career. In 1942 she was the second woman to be elected to the Royal Society of Canada. In 1948 she received the Flavelle Medal for “outstanding contributions to biological science,” and in 1956 the University of Minnesota awarded her its Outstanding Achievement Award for having attained unusual distinction in her chosen field. She also became a member of the Science Hall of Fame in Ottawa, Canada.   

Newton’s retirement was filled with the delights that come from the life of the mind. She returned to her first love, music and art. She became associated with music and arts at the University of Victoria, and they named one of their residence halls, for female students, the Margaret Newton Hall.  

Margaret Newton died in Victoria, Canada on April 6, 1971.

Donald Fletcher

Indispensable Private Sector Scientific Liaison and Leader, and Stakman’s Ambassador 

black and white photo of Donald Fletcher rating crops in the field

Donald Fletcher played an enormous role in the early success of the University of Minnesota Department of Plant Pathology and was central to the USDA’s Cereal Rust Laboratory.  

Fletcher was born on a farm in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota in 1898, and received a BS in agricultural education and farm management at the University of Minnesota in 1922. He had worked in the barberry eradication program two summers during college and began work toward a Master’s degree with Professor Stakman in 1922.

In 1922 the private sector organized The Conference for the Prevention of Grain Rust (later named The Rust Prevention Association and eventually The Crop Quality Council). Among the many business community leaders in this effort were Franklin M. Crosby (head of the Washburn Crosby Milling Company, predecessor to General Mills), Ralph Budd (president of the Great Northern Railway), and C. C. Weber of Deere & Weber (head of the Minneapolis division of John Deere). These business leaders wanted to help control wheat stem rust but soon recognized that they needed someone familiar with the science of rust prevention and needed a formal Secretary for this conference. In 1923 Stakman recommended Fletcher to be the Secretary for the Conference for the Prevention of Grain Rust. This conference included wheat producers, flour milling and railroad interests, as well as plant pathology and plant breeding representatives in both the Upper Midwest and Canada. 

At the time he accepted the position, Fletcher was well into his MS program in Plant Pathology and had passed a requisite German language examination. He likely thought this was a one-off job, and that he would return to finish his MS program. This was not to be. The position offered him a huge challenge and became Fletcher’s career, lasting until he retired in 1965.

The conference morphed into the Rust Prevention Association, financed entirely by private sector entities. In addition, Fletcher established life-long personal ties. 

The Stakmans and the Fletchers lived in close proximity on Hythe Avenue in Saint Anthony Park, near the Saint Paul Campus. The families often vacationed together, and Stakman even taught Fletcher’s daughter Barbara how to tap dance. 

Fletcher and the Rust Prevention Association collected rust samples each year from Mexico into the Canadian prairies. He and his staff sent the samples back to the Cereal Rust Laboratory in Saint Paul for race identification.  

Under Fletcher’s guidance the Rust Prevention Association morphed into a larger and more wide-ranging agricultural advocacy organization called the Crop Quality Council. Its activities included coordinating private sector activities with those of governmental agencies to benefit agriculture in the Midwestern United States. 

Donald Fletcher was often instrumental in getting increased financial support for USDA rust research by working with various Congressmen and Congressional Committees. When necessary, he would enlist Minnesota pathologists like Stakman, Harrar (Rockefeller Foundation), Rodenhiser (USDA), and other scientists to add depth and perspective to Congressional testimony, and to help with complex negotiations.  

According to Departmental alum, Dr. Eugene Hayden (Fletcher’s successor at the Crop Quality Council) indicated, “Donald Fletcher was Stakman’s long-time ambassador to the business community, and to agricultural policy makers.”

Donald Fletcher was largely responsible for getting new glass house facilities at the University of Minnesota and at North Dakota State University and South Dakota State University. He was instrumental in getting a Cereal Technology Building at North Dakota State University and the National Seed Storage Facility in Fort Collins, Colorado. He laid the foundation for the eventual building of the USDA-ARS Cereal Rust Laboratory building (now the Cereal Disease Laboratory) on the Saint Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota.  

It was during the stem rust pandemics of the mid 1950s that Fletcher undertook his greatest leadership role. Rust resistant wheat varieties and the elimination of millions of barberry bushes in wheat growing areas held stem rust in check on the North American Great Plains for decades. In the mid-1950s a new race, “15B,” was detected and became virulent on all widely grown wheat varieties. Serious losses occurred, and in 1954 more than 300,000,000 bushels of spring wheat and 80% of the durum crop was lost in the upper Midwest, while Canada lost 120,000,000 million bushels of wheat.  

In response to the devastating 15B pandemic Fletcher helped negotiate an international agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Using this agreement, public and private sector breeders, from all three countries, could submit coded materials for testing and crossing to the private sector’s Rust Prevention Association. From 1956 on, about 10,000 individual rows of experimental materials were grown each winter at the Mexico Department of Agriculture’s Experiment Station near Ciudad Obregon, Mexico. This is where Norman Borlaug and his staff, working for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Program, did their winter breeding work.  

Fletcher’s Rust Prevention Association arranged with Borlaug’s group to plant in October. Then, public and private breeders came to Mexico in March and April to select promising material for harvest the selected materials were returned north for testing and a second cycle of breeding. This enabled breeders to get two cycles of breeding done yearly, greatly speeding development of resistant wheats. This monumental effort was facilitated in large part by Donald Fletcher and the private sector’s Rust Prevention Association. It should be mentioned that several other nations joined in these efforts. The stem rust resistances developed during this period were at the vanguard of the Green Revolution.  

So great was his impact nationally that Fletcher became a member of the prestigious Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. He received many accolades, honors and awards—among them were the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Achievement Award, the E. C. Stakman Award and an honorary Doctor of Science Degree from North Dakota State University.  

Harold H. Flor

Gene-for-Gene Theory

black and white headshot of HH Flor

Harold Henry Flor (1900-1991) was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota. He received his BS in 1922, MS in 1924, and a PhD in Plant Pathology and Genetics in 1929, all from the University of Minnesota. His primary interest was in genetics of disease resistance. He became a USDA employee. Flor was assigned to study flax diseases, and for most of his career he was stationed on the North Dakota State University campus at Fargo, North Dakota.  

His seminal scientific work was with flax and its rust disease fungus Melampsora lini. Working from Stakman’s discovery of physiological races of stem rust fungi, Flor made crosses of both the host plant flax and its rust fungus to determine Mendelian genetic interactions. In the simplest cases Flor’s data suggested that for every gene for rust resistance (avirulence) in flax there was a corresponding gene for pathogenicity (virulence) in the flax rust fungus. This led to his famous gene-for-geneinteraction hypothesis, which later rose to the status of a theory. 

The gene-for-gene theory became a critically important model in plant pathology and other scientific fields. The theory had extraordinary usefulness in breeding of disease resistant plant cultivars, and later it became the intellectual platform for molecular genetic understanding of host/parasite interactions. 

Flor received many awards for his pioneering genetic studies in host-parasite interactions. He was held in awe by many and yet was a very modest individual. Flor served as President of the American Phytopathological Society. He was a quiet man and an adept investor. Flor established endowments to enhance learning in plant pathology at the University of Minnesota and at North Dakota State University. 

Helen Hart

Slow Rusting Pioneer - Trail Blazer

Helen Hart sitting at a desk in front of a bookshelf

Helen Hart (1900-1971) was born in Janesville, Wisconsin. She received her BA in 1922, MS in 1924, and PhD in 1929 at the University of Minnesota. After her PhD, she remained in Plant Pathology as an Agent in the Office of Cereal Crops and Diseases of the USDA’s Bureau of Plant Industry, and later became a full professor at the University of Minnesota.

Hart worked on environmental factors affecting the progress of rust epidemics and on the phenomena of slow rusting resistance in cereal rust diseases. This type of resistance minimizes the selection pressure on the fungus to form new pathogenic races and is considered more stable and thus more durable.  

Slow rusting was not popular with wheat and barley breeders because plants with it had some infection and breeders wished their new varieties to be immune. Thus, in her lifetime, Hart’s work, and that of her many students, was never given the acclaim it deserved. The concept of slow rusting has withstood the test of time, and this form of resistance is now used worldwide.

Hart was an exceptional writer and editor. She was also an astute observer with a wry sense of humor. Hart was in large part responsible for the creation of the Department’s newsletter, the Aurora Sporealis. She would sometimes express herself and her thoughts in poems published in the Aurora Sporealis. These poems were sometimes “anonymous” but recognizable as hers by those who knew her.  

Although never a regular classroom instructor, by her own wish, professor Hart presented many excellent “spot lectures” in several courses. She served for most of her academic career as the Department’s Director of Graduate Studies. She was especially effective in advising and guiding the many foreign graduate students who sought education at Minnesota. All PhD candidates had to have a working knowledge of two foreign languages and Hart often administered the demanding German language examination.

Hart served in several important capacities in APS including Editor-in-Chief of its premiere journal, Phytopathology. In 1955 she was elected as the first female president of the APS.  

Jacob G. "Dutch" Harrar

The Indispensable Leader -  Leader of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Agriculture Program  (CIMMYT). 

JG Harrar examines a species of plant under a microscope

Jacob George “Dutch” Harrar (1906-1982) was born in Painesville, Ohio. His father was an electrical engineer and his mother, Lucetta, a part time teacher. George was highly intelligent, a natural athlete, and loved music and reading. He and his older brother Elwood loved nature walks with their father, who was also their Boy Scout Leader.  

For college the brothers chose Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. George was only sixteen years old. He excelled at this liberal arts college and captained their track team. A swift 440-yard dash runner, he was dubbed “The Flying Dutchman,” and the nickname “Dutch” stuck with him. George graduated from Oberlin in 1928 and went to Iowa State University, where he received an MS degree in Botany. From Iowa he went to the University of Puerto Rico’s College of Agriculture as a professor of biology, where he taught until 1934. It was there he mastered Spanish and fell in love with Latin American culture. In 1934 he accepted a Firestone fellowship in Plant Pathology under Stakman, and he received his PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1935.  

Harrar was talented, competitive, and an excellent scholar. He was a natural leader, renowned for his powerful and competitive intellect and for his extraordinary people and management skills. He loved to debate. Stakman once said of Harrar, “Well, — an argument with George is not an argument  — it is a battle.”

By 1941, Harrar was Head of the Division of Plant Pathology at Washington State University. In 1943, Stakman recommended him to the Rockefeller Foundation to head its first ever-international crop improvement program, a joint effort with the government of Mexico.  

In 1944 he and Stakman convinced another Minnesota Plant Pathology alum, Norman Borlaug, to come to Mexico and be the program’s plant pathologist and wheat specialist. Harrar guided the Mexican Agriculture Program to unprecedented success; and by the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the program, and Borlaug’s wheats, spread into Chile, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru.  

In 1952 George Harrar left Mexico to become Deputy Director for Agriculture, and later, President of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Harrar retained Stakman as a Rockefeller consultant and trusted advisor. As a requisite to helping any nation, Harrar and the Rockefeller Foundation demanded that the nation seeking help establish a graduate level university of agriculture. Stakman was often sent to evaluate the current levels of competency in nations requesting Rockefeller assistance.  

With the help of the Ford Foundation, Harrar used the Mexican Agriculture Program, now the International Center for Maize and Wheat Improvement (Spanish acronym CIMMYT), as a template to start an International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. Many other international crop research centers followed.  

Today these 15 international agricultural centers are part of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). They are independent, non-profit research organizations, conducting innovative agricultural research.

Norman Borlaug

The Scientist/Humanitarian - The Green Revolution -  The 1970 Nobel Peace Prize

headshot of young Norman Borlaug

Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914-2009) was born on a farm near Cresco, Iowa. He attended a rural one-room school, then attended Cresco’s high school. To do so, he lived with relatives in Cresco during the winters when travel was too difficult to and from the Borlaug farm. After high school he worked for a year on various local farms to save money and planned to attend Iowa State Teachers College in Cedar Falls, Iowa. He planned to wrestle and study to become a high school science teacher and athletic coach. Through an improbable series of events, he ended up at the University of Minnesota’s College of Forestry and received his BS degree in 1937.   

An all-around athlete and a solid student, he was a collegiate wrestler. He met Elvin Stakman while majoring in Forestry and taking a course in Forest Pathology. Stakman was an avid supporter of university athletics. He had seen Borlaug wrestle and admired his tenacity and determination. Borlaug later attended one of Stakman’s lectures.  

Borlaug greatly admired Stakman and thought that if he ever went to graduate school that he’d like to study under Stakman.

Borlaug ended up working on an MS and PhD degree in Plant Pathology. His MS degree advisor was Dr. Clyde Christensen and his PhD advisor was Dr. Jonas Christensen, both Stakman proteges. As an MS student Borlaug worked on wood deterioration, and then on flax wilt disease in collaboration with Albert Moseman for his PhD.  

In 1941 after the start of World War II Borlaug left the University of Minnesota without his advanced degrees but with the blessing of Stakman. He worked in Delaware, in a DuPont de Nemours laboratory as a microbiologist, funded by a series of government contracts, to discover methods of preventing deterioration of military packaging materials. He wrote his MS and PhD theses during evenings and weekends. He received his MS in 1941 and PhD in 1942.

In 1944, while still at DuPont, Stakman and Harrar recruited him for the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican Program.  

Management at DuPont was very unhappy about this attempted recruitment, for it wanted to retain Borlaug. However, World War II was ending, and after much deliberation, and with the urging of his wife Margaret, Boraug accepted Harrar’s offer and left for Mexico. In Mexico Borlaug served as a plant pathologist and soon became head of their small wheat improvement program. 

Borlaug had little technical help, so he selected and trained a group of young Mexicans to help with bird control. From those he selected some who he would instruct in wheat breeding techniques. He soon had a large group of his own “homeschooled” wheat breeding technicians, some of whom got high-school level educations, and a few went to colleges and universities.  

Unencumbered by plant breeding dogma—he had taken only one plant breeding course at UMN—Borlaug’s group revolutionized wheat breeding. They did this through improving breeding protocols and what they called shuttle breeding. Shuttle breeding consisted of growing two crops of wheat a year in two locations almost 1000 miles apart. The summer crop was grown at high altitude near Mexico City at El Batan and the second, winter crop, in the northern state of Sonora at low altitudes near Obregon, Mexico. 

To conventional plant breeders shuttle breeding was heresy. They were highly critical of Borlaug, believing that breeding must take place where the plants were to be grown. Borlaug persisted, accelerating the breeding process, and by using two different locations, inadvertently removing the day length response (photoperiodism) in his wheat varieties. Eliminating day length response increased the adaptability of the Mexican wheats—they could grow wherever wheat was grown.  

Borlaug’s group bred stem rust resistance into existing Mexican wheats. They made thousands of crosses yearly, making resultant wheats available to all who asked. Thus, Borlaug’s wheats spread throughout Latin America and elsewhere. By the mid 1950s Mexico was self-sufficient in wheat. Borlaug believed his work was completed and prepared to leave Mexico.

However, Borlaug was asked to be part of a survey group to see what could be done for other nations. He joined the United Nations survey group, as a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation. The survey group toured middle eastern countries, Pakistan, and India. In the end, Borlaug recommended protocols like those used in the Rockefeller Foundation’s Mexican ProgramHe recommended that trainees from participating nations be brought to Mexico where they could work alongside him and his Mexican colleagues. He recommended the introduction of Mexican wheats to Pakistan and India.  

In the 1960s and early 1970s, the Mexican wheats were introduced into and quickly those Pakistan and India became self-sufficient in wheat production. The Mexican “miracle” wheats increased wheat yields by 300% to 500%. Soon local wheat breeders, in both countries, adapted the Mexican wheats.

During this period Borlaug produced semi-dwarf wheats with disease resistances and better yields. 

It was his for achievements and humanitarian values that Norman Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. 

In the early 1980s Borlaug conceived the idea of a World Food Prize to recognize individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world.  General Mills Incorporated was an initial sponsor and was joined by the Ruan family who created a 10-million-dollar endowment for the World Food Prize. 

At age 70, when Borlaug was retiring, a famine in Ethiopia prompted the Japanese philanthropist and businessman Ryoichi Sasakawa to approach Norman Borlaug to help in Africa. Thus, the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) was founded and Norman Borlaug became its president. The SAA joined with The Carter Center (begun by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) in an initiative called Sasakawa-Global 2000.  SSA focused on food, population and agriculture policy for African nations. Norman Borlaug worked with and guided SAA until his death in 2009.  

Norman Borlaug was, in his lifetime, only one of five people awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal.

Norman Borlaug passed away on September 12, 2009, in Texas, and was laid to rest at the Norman E. Borlaug Monument in Sonora, Mexico. As a further honor, the CIMMYT’s experiment station at Obregon was renamed the Norman E. Borlaug Experiment Station.

Sir Bent Skovmand

Genetic Preservation of Crop Plants and their Wild Relatives

Sir Bent Skovmand speaks at an event

Sir Bent Skovmand (1945-2007) was born in Denmark, the son of a Lutheran minister. As a young man he yearned for world peace and wanted to contribute to that end. His hero was Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish Secretary-General of the United Nations, who perished in a 1961 airplane crash. 

After high school he served as a tank commander in the Danish army and in the Bornholm Brigade, the Danish army’s equestrian unit. While in the army he applied for and was accepted into the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota Agricultural Student Trainee (MAST) program. The MAST program allowed him to work for a year on a Minnesota family farm, and to attend university classes at the Saint Paul Campus. At the end of his year on the farm he wanted to continue his education.  

He became an undergraduate and later a graduate student in the Department of Plant Pathology. As an undergraduate Work Study Program student, he worked on the oat blue dwarf virus with Ernest Banttari and Richard Zeyen, and then moved to the barley pathology project . His graduate advisor was Dr. Roy Wilcoxson, whose MS advisor had been Helen Hart. Skovmand’s MS research was in “slow rusting” resistance in barley toward rust diseases. Skovmand received his BS in 1971, MS in 1973 and PhD in 1976; all from the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota.

In 1976, after his PhD defense, and with the recommendation of Elvin Stakman, Skovmand was hired by Norman Borlaug at CIMMYT in Mexico. At first he worked in the CIMMYT wheat program and then became their triticale breeder. 

When, in the early 1980’s, CIMMYT closed its triticale breeding program, Skovmand left to work with the United Nations winter wheat improvement program in Turkey.  

In Turkey he became interested in the genetic preservation of land races and the wild progenitors of wheat and other cereals. In 1988, after five years in Turkey, he returned to Mexico to head the Wheat Genetic Resources (seed bank) program at CIMMYT. He became a world leader in the preservation of wheat and wheat relatives. In 1991, Time magazine stated that Dr. Skovmand, “while not exactly a household name, he has more to do with the welfare of the world’s five billion people than many heads of state.”

In 2003 his native Denmark honored him with the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Dannebrog for his many accomplishments.  In the same year he left CIMMYT to become Director of the Nordic Gene Bank (NGB) in Sweden. As Director of NGB he helped oversee the expansion, planning and construction of the Svalbard International Seed Vault on the Island of Spitsbergen, Norway.  

Bent Skovmand negotiated many national and international contracts for genetic preservation. The Svalbard Seed Vault’s purpose is to safeguard gene banks from conflict, national disasters, and from climate change. Skovmand worked to raise an endowment to protect the Svalbard Global Seed Vault from financial and political problems. 

Sir Bent Skovmand died in 2007 before the world could fully appreciate his scientific contributions. He was posthumously given the E. C. Stakman Award in 2007.  

Alumni & Faculty Involved in the Green Revolution

by Dr. Richard J. Zeyen, Professor Emeritus and Dr. Eugene Hayden, past Secretary of the Upper Midwest Crop Quality Council

 

Below is a listing of Department of Plant Pathology alumni who served with Norman Borlaug and Jacob G. Harrar and/or supported their international efforts in crop improvement and in controlling various plant diseases during the 20th Century’s Green Revolution (1941-1980). 

 

Plant Pathology Alumni

* = Spent significant portions of their careers working with and supporting Norman Borlaug or other portions of the Green Revolution.

  • Margaret Newton – PhD, 1922 - Canada
  • John H. Craigie – MS, 1925 – Canada
  • Bjorn Peturson –MS, 1929; PhD, 1952 – Canada
  • Ralph. U. Cotter – PhD, 1929
  • Moses N. Levine – PhD, 1924
  • Harold A. Rodenhiser – PhD, 1928
  • Helen Hart – PhD, 1929
  • Thorvaldur Johnson – PhD, 1930 – Canada
  • L. W. Melander – PhD, 1930
  • F. J. Greaney - PhD, 1931
  • *Jeorge. G. Harrar – PhD, 1935
  • I. A. Watson – PhD, 1941
  • John B. Rowell – PhD, 1949
  • William Q. Loegering – PhD, 1949
  • Harry C. Young – PhD, 1949
  • *John Gibler – MS, 1950; PhD 1951
  • Robert Skiles – PhD, 1952
  • Donald M. Stewart – PhD, 1953
  • Eugene B. Hayden – PhD, 1956
  • H. David Thurston – PhD, 1958
  • *Bobby Renfro – PhD, 1960
  • Bill J. Roberts – PhD, 1962
  • Rafael Lopez – MS, 1964
  • *Eugene Saari – PhD, 1966
  • *Mahesh Pandey – MS, 1966; PhD, 1969
  • Louis T. Palmer – PhD, 1968
  • *Jon M. Prescott – PhD, 1970
  • *Bent Skovmand – MS, 1973; PhD, 1976
  • Joseph Southern – PhD, 1978

 

Rockefeller Foundation and/or Mexican Government supported graduate students who attended and/or graduated from UMN Plant Pathology

  • Alfredo Campos – MS, 1950; PhD 1958
  • Angelita Melendez – MS, 1951
  • Gabriel P. Murillo
  • C. Ochoa – MS, 1954
  • Ma Lourdes De La Isla – MS, 1957
  • Marco A. Flores – MS, 1957
  • *Jacaobo Ortega - PhD, 1960
  • *Ricardo A. Rodriguez – PhD, 1960

 

Plant Pathology faculty who served as Rockefeller consultants to CIMMYT or with other Green Revolution efforts

  • *Elvin C. Stakman
  • Helen Hart
  • Clyde Christensen
  • Jonas Christensen
  • Matthew Moore
  • Sagar Krupa
  • Richard Zeyen

 

Other plant scientists from the University of Minnesota who worked in or supported the early wheat breeding efforts

  • *Joseph Rupert – BS, 1937 - Forestry
  • Donald Fletcher - BS, 1922 - Ag. Education; Plant Pathology Graduate work, 1922-25.
  • *Dr. Albert Moseman – PhD, 1941 – Plant Genetics/Pathology Minor