Translator: Tanya Cushman Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I think wheat actually is a living example, if you think about it,
of the acronym for TED.
What is TED?
T for Technology.
Researchers here, elsewhere in the world, are using the latest technologies
to improve a plant that has sustained our civilization for thousands of years.
Thousands.
E for Entertainment.
What could be more entertaining than the senses?
Than the aroma of fresh-baked bread.
Sorry - I know we're getting hungry, but just think about it.
D for Design.
Only by nature's design.
Only by nature's design could three wild, grassy weeds come together
and form one very sophisticated, but also complex, plant
that we now call wheat.
Wheat that can grow anywhere in the world.
No other crop plant can grow in as many places as wheat.
You all know, here in Oklahoma, wheat grows very well.
So it should be no surprise to you
that Oklahoma State University invests heavily in wheat research.
It grows right in the middle of our mission:
To create, to innovate and to educate.
One of the more visible products of our research -
and there are many products, but one more visible one -
would be the development of new varieties.
It takes about 12 years to produce a new variety of wheat,
and we release one - about one per year.
Every now and then, we will use a name
that will help the folks out there remember where those varieties came from,
including our crimson-clad farmers, that just might follow another university.
But you have to go back to the beginning of this university.
And when did this university become established? Anbody know?
1890.
Now go two more years after that.
That was the year that the first wheat experiment was put into the field,
here on campus,
at what I guess could have been called the Agronomy Farm, at that time,
located at Munroe and University Avenue.
A.C. Magruder was the first agricultural professor at OSU,
and he wanted to answer a very simple question.
How long could our prairie soils of Oklahoma
and the prairie soils of the Great Plains sustain a wheat crop?
A very important question.
In fact, it's a question that's being addressed today;
that experiment, started in 1892, is still being conducted today
on our campus.
However, just like everything else on campus, things get moved,
as you all know.
And in this picture, you can see where the plots were located.
They were located in what became Murray Hall.
They got in the way of Stout Hall - so you know who won that argument.
Those wheat plots, one by one,
soil layer by layer, 16 inches and below,
were moved to their current location at the Agronomy Farm,
which is about a mile and a half due west of here.
If you want to see those plots - they're there.
We're still using those plots to answer very important questions
about wheat production in the Great Plains.
There are other visible products that have come about
through wheat research at Oklahoma State University.
One you've probably heard about
is the use and the development of variable rate technology.
We have some of the brightest minds on this campus
developing this technology
so that we can apply inputs to the plant, like fertilizer,
in amounts that the plant would actually need.
Not what we think the plant needs
but what the plant is telling us that it needs, based on sensors.
And as I've mentioned before, OSU wheat varieties are born right here
in these greenhouses located off of Highway 51.
Sorry to show you another food related picture,
but this is all part of the talk.
Why is wheat so important?
Why is it so important to Oklahoma?
Well, it helps our diet; it's the front door to our diet.
It helps our economy, and it helps our nutrition, first lady Hargis.
No doubt about it.
First, our diet:
If you've ever had bread, cookies, crackers, cereal, cake, pasta, noodles,
pretzels, pizza - you name it,
you've eaten wheat.
Two and a half billion people in this world,
in 89 countries,
call wheat their primary food source.
That number will probably only go up.
Economy: If you grow wheat, you grow our economy.
55 million acres of wheat are being grown in this country today;
that number will probably also go up.
Put that number in Mike Gundy units, that's 38 million football fields.
Two-thirds of those football fields are here in the Great Plains,
and Oklahoma sits right in the middle.
Our nutrition: 20% of our calories come from foods that come from wheat.
21% of our protein comes from wheat.
But besides the energy we derive from that starch and protein,
we also derive some essential minerals - eight of them to be exact -
B vitamins,
antioxidants for good heart health,
and dietary fiber - if you're eating the whole kernel.
So wheat is definitely important.
But it's not such a rosy picture worldwide.
We have our challenges; we have our problems.
And I'm only going to bring up two of them today.
First is one that's brought by nature:
we breed resistance to about a dozen diseases
here at Oklahoma State University,
thanks to a very talented Wheat Improvement Team.
One of those is getting our attention right now,
that has not in the past so much,
thanks to the pioneering work of Norman Borlaug in the 50s,
but now it is getting our attention, called stem rust.
There's a particular strain of stem rust, called Ug99 -
if you've not heard of it, you need to know about it.
Ug99 is named such because this particular strain of stem rust
was found first, in 1999, in Uganda.
It's not here.
It will be here.
It is knocking on the door of major wheat-producing areas,
breadbaskets in other parts of the world, like India and Pakistan.
Why are we so concerned about it?
85% of the wheat that's grown today, across the world,
85% of that wheat
is susceptible to this emerging and highly variant strain of stem rust.
The world can ill afford to lose 85% of a crop plant
that gives us 20% of our energy.
So we've got to do something about it.
The world is coming together,
and Oklahoma State University is playing a significant part in that.
We know there are genes for resistance to Ug99,
the problem is they're not where we really want them.
So, here we're going to have to do something with what we have.
Those genes exist; they're tucked away
in some very old, wild relatives of wheat.
So we've got to bring them in, one by one, stack many of them together, probably,
because there is no magic bullet for this version of stem rust,
and put them into adaptive varieties.
Really have a lot of opportunities to work here at Oklahoma State,
with our colleagues on campus,
federal colleagues employed by USDA - the Agricultural Research Service -
all these minds are coming together
to provide solutions that are just around the corner.
The clock is ticking, so we do have to move on.
There's another problem we're facing, and Jason alluded to this:
We have plenty of problems brought on by nature,
but we also have problems brought on by ourselves,
and that is the proliferation of misinformation,
something's that not factual.
And we're seeing more and more information come across main-stream media
that is saying that wheat is not good for us.
So I want to show you just one example
from a show that was aired on network television just six weeks ago.
[To view the segment referenced by Carver, use the address available below.]
These are ideas not worth spreading.
There's a saying by an English author, Samuel Butler.
He said, if I can remember it correctly,
I'm trying to remember it off the top of my head,
I know what he said: "I hate lying, but it's innacuracy we cannot tolerate."
This is total inaccuracy.
Let me just quickly say a couple of things about this.
Spelt wheat.
Spelt is an old form of what we grow today as modern wheat.
It's not adapted.
It has two major problems:
It can not feed the world, for one.
And number two, you need to use a hammer to get the grain out.
It has very similar genetic makeup to modern wheat,
but it just cannot support our civilization -
we have a billion people, and I think Jason mentioned this,
a billion people that go to bed every night hungry.
They consume less than 1800 calories a day.
They won't make it on spelt wheat; our culture won't make it on spelt wheat.
So we just need to get away from that.
The other comment made was about gliadin,
which actually, in the scientific community, is called gliadin.
Let's back up for a minute.
Wheat protein is basically gluten.
So if you hear gluten, think protein.
All gluten is, is protein.
Not all proteins are gluten; they're not good enough to be gluten.
Gluten is what makes wheat so special.
Gluten has two components: glutenins and gliadins -
that's what he called gliadins.
These two componets have been in wheat long before we started slicing bread.
And to suggest that one was put in to improve yields - gliadins -
is absolutely false.
And this just reminds me of one very important fact
I think we all need to consider.
We live in the information age;
it's a blessing, but it's also a curse.
Because we had no guarantee that the information you receive is true.
So I think we all have the responsibility
to use those old school, critical thinking skills
we picked up in college
and separate the wheat from the chaff.
I'll stop there. I want to thank you for this opportunity to talk to you
about an incredible, edible plant called wheat.
(Applause)