Norman Borlaug - Wheat Research in Mexico

Wheat Research in Mexico

The Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, a joint venture by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture, involved research in genetics, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, agronomy, soil science, and cereal technology. The goal of the project was to boost wheat production in Mexico, which at the time was importing a large portion of its grain. Plant pathologist George Harrar recruited and assembled the wheat research team in late 1944. The four other members were William Colwell; maize breeder Edward Wellhausen; potato breeder John Niederhauser; and Norman Borlaug, all from the United States. During the sixteen years Borlaug remained with the project, he bred a series of remarkably successful high-yield, disease-resistant, semi-dwarf wheat.

Borlaug said that his first few years in Mexico were difficult. He lacked trained scientists and equipment. Native farmers were hostile toward the wheat program because of serious crop losses from 1939 to 1941 due to stem rust. "It often appeared to me that I had made a dreadful mistake in accepting the position in Mexico," he wrote in the epilogue to his book, Norman Borlaug on World Hunger. He spent the first 10 years breeding wheat cultivars resistant to disease, including rust. In that time, his group made 6,000 individual crossings of wheat.