A research associate in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of California, Davis, Dr Ardeshir Damania has been selected for the Frank N. Meyer Medal for Plant Genetic Resources from the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA). "The award recognizes Damania’s achievements studying wheat, leading crop research and collecting seeds that record the grain’s genetic history,” announced the website www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu.
"The Meyer award will be given to me at the annual meeting of the CSSA on November 9 in Salt Lake City, Utah,” Damania informed Parsiana. The Medal has been instituted in memory of Meyer who served for 13 years as agricultural explorer in the Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction and lost his life in 1918 in the waters of the Yangtze River in China at the age of 43. The award includes an engraved bronze medal, a cash prize, citation from the American Society of Agranomy a complimentary ticket to the Meyer Medal breakfast and CSSA award ceremony, as stated on crops.org.
The nomination for the Medal for Damania was made by Paul Gepts, a distinguished professor emeritus in the Department of Plant Sciences, who has worked closely with Damania. Having received the Meyer Medal 10 years ago, Gepts commented, "Adi’s work is a textbook example of a career in plant genetic resources conservation in all its diversity, from botanical explorations to evaluations of genetic diversity. I am especially grateful for his contributions to the organization of high-level scientific meetings on the origin and evolution of crops and agriculture.”
Dr Ardeshir Damania and Meyer Medal
Damania (l) collecting old landraces of bread wheat in Iran in 1993
"Gratified that my hard work in the field and harsh environment of Africa and Syria is finally recognized,” Damania recounted the highlights of his work spanning five decades for the plantsciences website. During his career, Damania collected crop genetic resources and worked for agricultural organizations in many countries, including Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Seychelles, Mauritius, Syria, Iran, Bhutan, Russia and India. Besides working on "the collection and evaluation of wheat genetic resources, I also did a lot of research on the origins of agriculture, crop domestication, and the spread of agriculture to other parts of the world.”
Studying botany, he had earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Bombay after which he pursued a second master’s degree and a PhD at the University of Birmingham in the UK, focusing on genetic resources and wheat. He initially worked for the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an organization working toward food security in developing nations. In 1991, at the time of the first Gulf War, Damania was in Syria doing research for one of CGIAR’s 15 research centers, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
"As the collection’s curator, I was ordered to take the irreplaceable gene bank of the wild wheat species to our sister research station in Mexico for safe-keeping.” But to carry it to CGIAR’s International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (better known by its Spanish acronym CIMMYT) when no airlines were flying out of Syria was a challenge. Ultimately he went on a "ghost flight” (a planned route that an airline continues to fly despite having few or zero passengers to maintain airport slots) from Aleppo, Syria, to Rome, Italy when he was the only passenger on the Caravelle aircraft besides the crew! The Italian customs were suspicious of him carrying 23 boxes of wheat seeds as also a file marked "passport information,” which they presumed bore data on some dubious persons. When the customs officer opened one of the vacuum-sealed packs, he found "an accession of wild wheat which he thought was dried grass.” To the surprise of the officer, Damania explained that the passports were for the boxed wheat samples after which he was permitted to proceed with the cargo.
At the University of California, Damania joined the Genetic Resources Conservation Program that provided small grants to genetic collections of microbial, plant and animal species. It also coordinated grant-supported research programs and conferences. Damania was a key member of the team as a meeting organizer and book editor.