BY DEVISING ingenious ways to breed disease-resistant wheat, Norm Borlaug, who died Saturday aged 95, helped to end famine in much of the world. Yet the fungi he battled still pose a global threat.
In 1944, the US government sent Borlaug, an agronomist, to Mexico to fight wheat’s age-old enemy, stem rust fungus, after outbreaks had rampaged into the US breadbasket. His plants upped food production elsewhere, notably India, and ushered in the “green revolution” in which irrigation, fertiliser and high-yield crops were used worldwide.
But in 2007, Borlaug, battling cancer but not yet frail, was angered. A stem rust…
