Wayne Adams, 1918-2015
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EmailThe world of grain legume research lost a significant figure on September 9, 2015, in the person of M. Wayne Adams.
Co-Founding director of the Bean/Cowpea CRSP
The world of grain legume research lost a significant figure on September 9, 2015, in the person of M. Wayne Adams, co-founding director of the Bean/Cowpea CRSP and distinguished professor of plant genetics in the Crop and Soil Science department at Michigan State University. Throughout his long and distringuished career, Professor Adams led plant breeding efforts to improve navy beans and worked tirelessly to address the problems of third world food production.
In 1980, Adams, recognizing the value of grain legumes as a nutrient-dense, high protein food that could benefit people throughout the world, extended his science leadership in grain legume research to international realms with the advent of the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP) funded by USAID. His foundational work is central to the ongoing growth of collaborative research projects in grain legumes to address food insecurity and world poverty. The Legume Innovation Lab traces its origin to Adams’s work and commitment to improve the lives of smallholder pulse farmers in Africa and Latin America.
Among Dr. Adams’s many scholarly articles and presentations on plant breeding and research can be found two more general pieces—one a perspective on the founding of the Bean/Cowpea CRSP (“Perspectives from M. Wayne Adams, Co-Founder” in A Moment in Time: Historical Perspectives on the Development of the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program) and the other an outline of bean research in the twentieth century (An Historical Perspective on Significant Accomplishments in Dry Bean Research -The First 100 Years).
A memorial service is planned for October 18th, 2:00 p.m. in Crystal, Michigan, at the Lux and Schnepp Funeral Home. Memorial donations can be made to the M.W. Adams scholarship fund at the Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences at M.S.U.
Please share your thoughts and memories of Wayne by way of his online guestbook at www.reynolds-jonkhoff.com - See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/LSJ/obituary.aspx?n=M-Wayne-Adams&pid=175870200#sthash.DnXNgf75.dpuf
