Barley, Barberry, and Biological Warfare: A Short History of Stem Rust, 4,000 BCE – Present
Stem rust (puccina graminis) is a virulent crop disease that has haunted agriculture in the West since at least 4000 BCE. It made its way to the New World via its host the common barberry bush (berberis), which was very useful to settlers and thus it spread rapidly in the wild. By 1916 stem rust wiped out over half of the grain harvest in Minnesota and the Dakotas, at which point the US government embarked on a widespread program to combat it. This was largely successful and, by the 1950s, the Truman White House contemplated using it to conduct crop biowarfare against the Soviets. Today, new strains of puccina graminis have evolved, and the centuries-old battle between stem rust and humankind continues apace.
Karl Brown, Associate Professor, History
Monday, October 2, 2023 at 3:00 pm
Lectures will be held on Mondays at 3 p.m. in the Olm Fellowship Hall of Fairhaven Senior Services, 435 West Starin Road, Whitewater. They are open to the public and registration is not required. Lectures may be recorded and posted to our Fairhaven Lecture website and YouTube channel. Videos of lectures in this series and in past series can be accessed for free any time after they are posted online.
Follow us on social media for more information. Any other questions, please contact Kari Borne at bornek@uww.edu or 262-472-1003.
