The 2009 World Food Prize will be awarded to Dr. Gebisa Ejeta of
Ethiopia, whose sorghum hybrids resistant to drought and the
devastating Striga weed have dramatically increased the production
and availability of one of the world�s five principal grains and
enhanced the food supply of hundreds of millions of people in
sub-Saharan Africa.
OVERCOMING EARLY OBSTACLES THROUGH EDUCATION
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Ejeta
as a grad student at Purdue in 1974
(click photo to enlarge)
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Born in 1950, Gebisa Ejeta grew up in a one-room thatched hut
with a mud floor, in a rural village in west-central Ethiopia.
His mother�s deep belief in education and her struggle to
provide her son with access to local teachers and schools provided
the young Ejeta with the means to rise out of poverty and hardship.
His mother made arrangements for him to attend school in a
neighboring town. Walking 20 kilometers every Sunday night to attend
school during the week and then back home on Friday, he rapidly
ascended through eight grades and passed the national exam
qualifying him to enter high school.
Ejeta�s high academic standing earned him financial assistance
and entrance to the secondary-level Jimma Agricultural and Technical
School, which had been established by Oklahoma State University
under the U.S. government�s Point Four Program. After graduating
with distinction, Ejeta entered Alemaya College (also established by
OSU and supported by the U.S. Agency for International Development)
in eastern Ethiopia. He received his bachelor�s degree in plant
science in 1973.
In 1973, his college mentor introduced Ejeta to a renowned
sorghum researcher, Dr. John Axtell of Purdue University, who
invited him to assist in collecting sorghum species from around the
country. Dr. Axtell was so impressed with Ejeta that he invited him
to become his graduate student at Purdue University. This invitation
came at a time when Ethiopia was about to enter a long period of
political instability which would keep Ejeta from returning to his
home country for nearly 25 years.
Ejeta entered Purdue in 1974, earning his Ph.D. in plant breeding
and genetics. He later became a faculty member at Purdue, where
today he holds a distinguished professorship.
Developing Drought-Tolerant Crops for Africa
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Gebisa
Ejeta conducting sorghum research
(click photo to enlarge)
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Upon completing his graduate degree, Dr. Ejeta accepted a
position as a sorghum researcher at the International Crop Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) office in Sudan.
During his time at ICRISAT, Dr. Ejeta developed the first hybrid
sorghum varieties for Africa, which were drought-tolerant and
high-yielding.
With the local importance of sorghum in the human diet (made into
breads, porridges, and beverages), and the vast potential of dryland
agriculture in Sudan, Dr. Ejeta�s drought-tolerant hybrids brought
dramatic gains in crop productivity and also catalyzed the
initiation of a commercial sorghum seed industry in Sudan.
His Hageen Dura-1, as the hybrid was named, was released in 1983
following field trials in which the hybrids out-yielded traditional
sorghum varieties by 50 to 100 percent. Its superior grain qualities
contributed to its rapid spread and wide acceptance by farmers, who
found that yields increased to more than 150 percent greater than
local sorghum, far surpassing the percentage gain in the trials.
Dr. Ejeta�s dedication to helping poor farmers feed themselves
and their families and rise out of poverty propelled his work in
leveraging the gains of his hybrid breeding breakthrough. He urged
the establishment of structures to monitor production, processing,
certification, and marketing of hybrid seed�and farmer-education
programs in the use of fertilizers, soil and water conservation, and
other supportive crop management practices.
By 1999, one million acres of Hageen Dura-1 had been harvested by
hundreds of thousands of Sudanese farmers, and millions of Sudanese
had been fed with grain produced by Hageen Dura-1.
Another drought-tolerant sorghum hybrid, NAD-1, was developed for
conditions in Niger by Dr. Ejeta and one of his graduate students at
Purdue University in 1992. This cultivar has had yields 4 or 5 times
the national sorghum average.
Using some of the drought-tolerant germplasm from the hybrids in
Niger and Sudan, Dr. Ejeta also developed elite sorghum inbred lines
for the U.S. sorghum hybrid industry. He has released over 70
parental lines for the U.S. seed industry�s use in commercial
sorghum hybrids in both their domestic and international markets.
Defeating the Scourge of Striga
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Ejeta
with Striga-stricken sorghum in Niger
(click photo to enlarge)
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Dr. Ejeta�s next breakthrough came in the 1990s, the
culmination of his research to conquer the greatest biological
impediment to food production in Africa � the deadly parasitic
weed Striga, known commonly as witchweed, which devastates yields of
crops including maize, rice, pearl millet, sugarcane, and sorghum,
thus severely limiting food availability. A 2009 UN Environmental
Programme report estimated that Striga plagues 40% of arable
savannah land and over 100 million people in Africa.
Previous attempts by African sorghum farmers to control the
deadly weed, including crop management techniques and application of
herbicides, had failed until Dr. Ejeta and his Purdue colleague Dr.
Larry Butler formulated a novel research paradigm for genetic
control of this scourge. With financial support from the Rockefeller
Foundation and USAID, they developed an approach integrating
genetics, agronomy, and biochemistry that focused on unraveling the
intricate relationships between the parasitic Striga and the host
sorghum plant. Eventually, they identified genes for Striga
resistance and transferred them into locally adapted sorghum
varieties and improved sorghum cultivars. The new sorghum also
possessed broad adaptation to different African ecological
conditions and farming systems.
The dissemination of the new sorghum varieties in Striga-endemic
African countries was initially facilitated in 1994 by Dr. Ejeta,
working closely with World Vision International and Sasakawa2000.
Those organizations coordinated a pilot program, with USAID funding,
that distributed eight tons of seed to Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania,
and Zimbabwe. The yield increases from the improved Striga-resistant
cultivars have been as much as four times the yield of local
varieties, even in the severe drought areas.
In 2002-2003, Dr. Ejeta introduced an integrated Striga
management (ISM) package, again through a pilot program funded by
USAID, to deploy in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Tanzania along with the
Striga-resistant sorghum varieties he and his colleagues had
developed at Purdue. This ISM package achieved further increased
crop productivity through a synergistic combination of weed
resistance in the host plant, soil-fertility enhancement, and water
conservation.
Empowering Farmers, Inspiring Young Scientists
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Ejeta
working with students at Purdue University
(click photo to enlarge)
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By partnering with leaders and farmers across sub-Saharan Africa
and educational institutions in the U.S. and abroad, Dr. Ejeta has
personally trained and inspired a new generation of African
agricultural scientists that is carrying forth his work.
Dr. Ejeta�s scientific breakthroughs in breeding
drought-tolerant and Striga-resistant sorghum have been combined
with his persistent efforts to foster economic development and the
empowerment of subsistence farmers through the creation of
agricultural enterprises in rural Africa. He has led his colleagues
in working with national and local authorities and nongovernmental
agencies so that smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs can
catalyze efforts to improve crop productivity, strengthen
nutritional security, increase the value of agricultural products,
and boost the profitability of agricultural enterprise � thus
fostering profound impacts on lives and livelihoods on broader scale
across the African continent.
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