One agronomist's disease-resistant wheat is credited with saving a billion lives
Norman Borlaug spent decades in Mexico breeding short, sturdy wheat strains that resisted disease and produced far higher yields without collapsing under their own grain. Introduced across Mexico, India and Pakistan through the 1960s, the new varieties drove yield increases of 60% or more and helped avert mass famines many demographers had predicted for South Asia. Borlaug won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for work now credited with saving roughly a billion people from starvation.