The Green Revolution Digitization Project at the University of Minnesota: A Collaborative Model of Support for Preservation and Access

摘要

The Green Revolution was a mid-20th century decades-long international science and educational effort to provide food security to hundreds of millions. This was accomplished in developing countries through increased crop production and graduate-level education and training on site. Many of the early leaders of the effort received their graduate education at the University of Minnesota. Professor Elvin C. Stakman of the Department of Plant Pathology was their teacher, intellectual leader, mentor, and friend. The best known of these Minnesota graduates was Norman E. Borlaug (BS 1936, MS 1941, PhD 1942), who in 1970 received the Nobel Peace Prize for his role of producing “miracle semi dwarf wheats.” These widely adapted, high-yielding, disease-resistant wheats were the vanguard of the effort to end world hunger. Because this revolution in food production involved improving green, chlorophyll-containing crop plants it was termed the “Green Revolution.” (Chlorophyll is the green pigment in plant leaves that traps solar energy and allows plants to fix atmospheric carbon into edible carbohydrates.)