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| Dr. Hahn Sang-ki |
By Kim Se-jeong
Dr. Hahn Sang-ki, 87, is a world-famous plant breeder regarded for his contributing efforts to the development of agriculture in Africa.
For 23 years, he worked for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) located in Abadan, Nigeria. There, he developed high-yielding disease-resistant cassava varieties, which saved many across Africa from starvation. He was a professor of the Seoul National University before he joined the IITA in 1971.
Cassava is a major spale of poor farmers in Africa, but it had very serious diseases problems with both African cassava mosaic virus and cassava bacterian blight disease that plagued the poor farmers.
Hahn identified from a wild related species of cassava the sources of resistance to the two major disases of cassava. He successfully incorporated them into cultivated local cassava varieties. The improved, high yielding and disease resistant cassava varieties have been widely grown by many farmers on over 5 million hectars in West Africa particularly in Nigeria and saved many lives of poor African peasants inflicted by food shortage in surrounding countries of the sub-Sahara.
For his achievement, he received the Guinness Award for Scientific Achievement given by Guinness World Records in 1982. His contribution also won him a fellowship by the Institute of Biology, London, in 1984 and later by the Society of Biology of the United Kingdom. In 1994, he was awarded the fellowship from the Ameican Society of Agronomy.
In 1983, he was given a traditional chieftaincy title, Sereki Agbe (The King of Farmers), by the traditional king of Ikire, a town of more than 100,000 population in Nigeria.
He was recommended three times for the World Food Price and once for the Japan Price.
Retiring from the IITA in 1994, he, together with his wife, moved to the U.S. where he served as the honorary professor of the Cornell University and the University of Georgia.
His latest book, "The Birthplaces of Cultivated Plants" published in August, explains the origins of common and important plants found in Korea.
"I had wanted to write this book for a long time, but didn't have enough resources. After I moved back to Korea in 2015, I met two people who helped me get the information I needed to write the book," Hahn said in an email.
He said that ancian West Africans settled along the upper River Niger and domesticated plants as crops such as sorghums, millets, cowpeas, yams, African rice, melon and water melon several thousands years B.C.
As ancient Africans migrated eastwards, they brought the crops to Ehtiopia where they together with other Ethiopian native crops such as wheats, barley, sesame, peas etc., moved to the Middle East. The evolution progress of gradual migration of these crops reached Korea via Southeast Asia.
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| Dr. Hahn Sang-ki with new varieties of cassava he produced in this undated photo Courtesy of Hahn Sang-ki |
When apple trees first arrived from the U.S., Korea had its own native native apple, called "neunggeum," that wasn't as sweet as the new apple varrieties from the U.S. With the migration of new species from the U.S., the native apple trees have gone through extinction.
"Traditional cotton and rye farming have completely disappeared from us in Korea. As a consequence, the valuable genetic resources have recently been lost and being continuously lost from us. The eroson of the genetic resources of crop plants is a serious problem the world faces."
He added, "The general resources of crop plants are important cultural heritages. They shape and influence history, culture and civilization of human beings. It should be noted that the term 'culture' came originally from agriculture since human civilization took place with agriculture."
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