Book Review 32
Review
Title: The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist's Struggle to Preserve the World's Harvest
ISBN 13: 9780802717405
Published: 2009
Pages: 256
Cost: $26
Rating (1-5): 3
Submitted By: Noaman, Maher Mohammed
Date posted: January 28, 2010
This book is interesting and easy to read; it is more historical and biographical than scientific.
The Viking in the Wheat Field book is by Susan Dworkin, who took the readers into the world of the Danish plant scientist Bent Skovmand (1945–2007), who fought to safeguard and increase the world’s wheat supply. He worked for "the Center for Improvement of Maize and Wheat" in Mexico (known by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT) for about 35 years collecting, multiplying, and documenting the world’s wheat varieties to protect the harvest against distorted plagues and drastic climate changes. Before his sudden death in 2007, he worked to develop the so-called "Doomsday Vault" on Norway’s Arctic border where nations store their crop seeds under tons of ice and rocks as insurance against catastrophe. He fought to keep his seed bank a center for free, open scientific exchange, as a service to breeders and farmers everywhere.
The introductory chapter of the book states that more than 25% of the world’s calories comes from wheat. It is mainly used for toast, cereal, pasta, and many other products. Without the efforts exerted by many scientists and organizations to save wheat varieties in "seed banks" and to keep it available to everyone in the public domain, the world’s wheat supply would have been in jeopardy.
Then the author shifted the gears to talk about the heirs of Norman Borlaug in the second chapter. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, and the Congressional Gold Medal. He is reckoned to have saved more lives— hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion—than any man in human history. Borlaug forefronted the so called "Green Revolution," which in turn helped to greatly increase agricultural productivity in Mexico in the 1960s. Within a few years of adopting Borlaug’s methods, Mexico was self-sufficient in wheat. When he took his innovations to India and Pakistan, the outcome was much the same. "The Indian wheat crop of 1968 was so bountiful," the New York Times observed, "that the government had to turn schools into temporary granaries."
Chapter three discusses the marriage between wheat and rye (triticale), the first man-made crop between two different genera. Getting them to mate and mix has been a huge breeding accomplishment. With its combined strengths of wheat and rye, triticale seemed to hold tremendous potential for being able to flourish in the exhausted soils of the developing world.
The remaining chapters of the book focus on the importance of the gene banks globally and in the United States. They also provide some useful information about the centers of origin and warn about the loss of genetic resources and biodiversity; therefore, scientists must collect and study wild relatives of our cultivated plants as well as the domesticated races for the sake of future generations.
Generally, the book is more historical and biographical, with some general information, than a scientific one. It can be used by the public community and laypeople as well. However, for readers wishing to get detailed and more scientific information about the wheat plant, they should read somewhere else. This book is interesting, easy to read, and basically promotes the concept of wheat conservation and genetic biodiversity for the sake of food security, especially in developing countries.
The author has written several biographies, including The Nazi Officer’s Wife, and her articles have appeared in Ms., Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, and numerous magazines. Her fascination with agriculture dates from early stints at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and as a journalist covering aid programs in the Middle East. She lives in New York City and the Berkshires.