Breeding success

By Addison DeHaven

At the age of 13, Edgar McFadden had big responsibility. It was 1904 and his father was bed-ridden after being gored by a bull. McFadden was charged with managing the family farm near Webster, South Dakota. He planted the crops and watched as his wheat fields turned ripe with a golden hue.

Then, just days before harvest, the stems broke and the kernels shriveled. McFadden watched helplessly as stem rust ravaged months of work and his family’s livelihood.

This had become a familiar pattern for South Dakota farmers. Once home to the largest inland wheat market in the world, stem rust epidemics were becoming more and more frequent and, in some years, wiped out entire harvests.

In 1911 — a particularly bad year for stem rust — McFadden enrolled at Dakota Agricultural College, now known as South Dakota State University, determined to learn about botany, field crops and diseases. Before leaving for school, McFadden noticed stem rust didn't bother a plot of Yaroslav emmer, an ancient crop that was rather useless to South Dakota farmers in 1911. This gave him an idea. Could emmer be bred with a more useful plant to create a disease-resistant variety? 

As a student, McFadden began conducting crossbreeding experiments at the South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station under the direction of assistant agronomy professor Manly Champlain. His plan was to cross emmer with Marquis, the preeminent spring wheat variety, but he was warned breeding the two plants would be nearly impossible.

Through hardship, years of patience and seemingly endless trials, McFadden was able to successfully develop a new cultivar by crossing Marquis with emmer in 1925. He named this variety "Hope," and its ability to resist both stem and leaf rusts is considered one of the great agricultural innovations in history.

According to magazines and newspapers in the 1940s, Hope would save 25 million people globally from starvation and helped fuel the Allies to victory in World War II.

This pioneering research by McFadden laid the groundwork for decades of plant breeding success at South Dakota State University. Today, SDSU's wheat breeding programs and breeders continue pivotal work in developing new varieties for farmers in South Dakota and the Upper Midwest.