Word: seeding
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Answer to Prayers? Last week, hopes were briskly and perhaps brashly fanned for a short cut in production. Science Reporter William L. Laurence of the New York Times reported in a Page One story that "The seed of an African plant holds the answer to the prayers of millions for cortisone...Strophanthus sarmentosus is a potentially unlimited source of the raw material for cortisone." This material, he said, is "more closely related to cortisone than ox bile acid, and will therefore require many fewer steps in its chemical conversion...It is 17 steps nearer to cortisone than bile acid...
Laurence, tipped off last spring by a chemist friend of the theoretical possibilities of the seed, read up on the subject and was deeply impressed by what he found. He discussed the matter with President Truman, who passed him on to Oscar Ewing, Federal Security administrator. U.S. scientists had already been ordered to Liberia to study the plants, collect seeds, and investigate the possibilities of large-scale cultivation there, or of transplanting to the U.S. After talking with Laurence, Ewing expansively declared that "this may be to chemistry what the atomic bomb was to physics," and asked...
...Roman Catholic clergy tends to regard such activity as an intrusion into its vineyard. Many an Indian miner has been told that the Protestants are "messengers of the devil"; more sophisticated Bolivians have been warned that the evangelistas are advance agents of Yankee imperialism. From the sowing of such seed came evil fruit last week...
...snap of the pistil knocks the bee for a loop. Tough wild bees will take this punishment. Gently bred tame bees will not. They sneak up on the flower and steal its nectar stealthily without springing the pistil. The flower thus remains unfertilized and bears no alfalfa seed...
...Nebraska and other regions that produce alfalfa seed, wild bees are getting scarcer. In recent years, the yield of seed per acre has been steadily going down. Dr. Hixson has been crossing alfalfa strains, breeding them for gentleness of pistil. He hopes to develop flowers with so soft a wallop that even the timidest bee will not be afraid to alight on them...