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Brian Steffenson is a professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Plant Pathology who specializes in diseases of cereal crops. As holder of the department’s Lieberman-Okinow Endowed Chair, his primary
mission is to identify, characterize, and use genes from wild species to enhance wheat, barley, oat and rye varieties.
Steffenson plays a key role in the U of M’s work on Ug99, the devastating wheat stem rust strain
currently affecting cereal crops in Africa and the Middle East. U of M scientists are part of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, a worldwide consortium of scientists racing to stop Ug99 before it spreads further.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Cereal Disease Lab, based on the St. Paul campus, also does important work in this area.
Small grain cereals were first domesticated from their wild progenitors about 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent and have undergone strong selection pressure from the time of early domestication through modern plant breeding, resulting in
the loss of genetic diversity. The wild progenitor species, still growing in the Fertile Crescent today, are a virtual treasure trove of valuable and diverse genes that can be used to enhance the yield, quality and
disease resistance of new wheat and barley varieties.
Steffenson has identified effective new resistance genes against stem race Ug99 from Sharon goatgrass, a wild wheat relative native to Israel. He also has developed lines derived from wild barley that have enhanced Fusarium head blight resistance. Steffenson and his team collect wild cereal species from across their natural ranges and evaluate them for economically important traits that can be transferred into domestic grain varieties.
All photos by David Hansen,University of Minnesota
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