Wheat provides about 20 percent of the food calories for the worlds people
GOAL: replacing almost all of the commercial wheat grown in the world today.............. The new strains of stem rust, called Ug99 because they were discovered in Uganda in 1999, are much more dangerous than those that, 50 years ago, destroyed as much as 20 percent of the American wheat crop. Todays lush, high-yielding wheat fields on vast irrigated tracts are ideal environments for the fungus to multiply, so the potential for crop loss is greater than ever.............. From 1965 to 1985, the heyday of the Green Revolution, world production of cereal grains wheat, rice, corn, barley and sorghum nearly doubled, from 1 billion to 1.8 billion metric tons, and cereal prices dropped by 40 percen
Source: NORMAN E. BORLAUG, Stem Rust Never Sleeps New York Times, op-ed, 4.26.08