Vavilov told his family that he was going to the Pamirs to collect a famed strain of Persian wheat, and to collect samples of all the grain crops in Iran. In fact, the Tsarist government sent him to discover why Russian troops at remote garrisons were becoming sick on the wheat flour in their rations.
Once Nikolay arrived at the first garrison near the Iranian border, he quickly surmised that the soldiers were being fed a flour that included not only the ground grains of wheat, but the ergot-infested seeds of a weedy grass named darnel as well. [1] Ergot is a fungus that attacks the grass seeds, producing toxic but typically sub-lethal levels of lysergic acid, the naturally-occurring drug that became later famous as LSD. Already suspecting that fungus-infested darnel was the cause, Vavilov quickly completed his official assignment by making a simple suggestion to the garrison commander: his men would probably stop all of their hallucinating just as soon as he bought them some better quality flour. The commander appeared grateful, so much so that Nikolay assumed he would be given the logistical support to freely wander through Persian fields and gardens, collecting as many seeds and taking as many field notes as he pleased.
Extracted from Where our Food Comes From by Gary Paul Nabhan
and used with permission.
Notes:
- Probably Lolium temulentum, which seems to be much more susceptible to infection by the ergot-producing fungus than other species of rye. [↩]
