For the millions of north Indian wheat farmers, fate really does ride in the winds. A southern wind brings sighs of relief; they know that warm monsoon rains soon will revive their parched fields. But a western wind brings shudders of fear; all are unsure if that breeze carries with it a spore of the potent Ug99 fungus - the fungus that could single-handedly undermine the global food supply.

Ten years ago, in the fields of Uganda and Kenya, a mutated strain of the Ug99 fungus, also known as wheat stem rust, successfully overcame the genetic defenses embedded in the local wheat plants, destroying entire harvests in the ground where they stand and releasing its spores into the air above them. Since then, the rust has followed the winds and the wheat north through Africa, Yemen, Iran and is now poised to strike the fields of North India and Pakistan - home to more than 20 percent of the planet's wheat supply and millions of the world's poorest, most vulnerable farmers. These farmers stand to swell the ranks of those farmers already devastated by rust in villages from Kenya to Iran. There, rust has successively destroyed up to 80 percent of the wheat crop.

In an attempt to avert catastrophe, the world's brightest minds have focused their attention on an advanced biotech lab in Minnesota to develop new seeds resistant to the fungus. The long-term strategy to global crop pathogens like wheat rust, however, actually may be found closer to Ethiopia and with the long overlooked orphan crops of the developing world...

According to Walter Falcon, the deputy director for Stanford University's Program for Food Security and the Environment, and a former chairman of CGIAR's wheat and maize center in Mexico, "much of what happens these days [in agricultural research] is maintenance breeding - where pests come back and you have to battle them again after you thought the battle was over."

Like Borlaug, Falcon was one of the journeymen of the Green Revolution. He lived in Pakistan while the revolution was in full swing and his work helped develop the South Asian wheat fields whose fate now hangs in the balance.

"Growing wheat is a roulette game," he says now, speaking from long experience. "We always know that rusts come and go - that is why you typically rotate varieties every eight or 10 years. But in humid tropical conditions [like East Africa], all bets are off." In warm, moist tropical regions, there is no winter frost to kill rust spores and annually reset the growth of that virulent fungal population. Furthermore, moist air improves the germination success of those spores and rusts tend to mutate more quickly in the warm weather.

All together, the climate of East Africa acts like an incubator for the development of new mutations and new strains of dangerous plant disease. That is why even though Uganda and Kenya aren't global leaders in growing wheat, they have proven to be quite proficient at growing rust.

Agricultural research should spend more time and money developing yield improvements for native, local crops like teff, cassava, sorghum and pigeon pea so that developing countries will have viable alternatives to just wheat, rice and maize.

"The problem is twofold: First, overall agricultural investment is too low, and second, investment in developing countries has either stagnated or is decreasing."

Total public agricultural investment hovers around $25 billion a year. A third of this investment goes toward the developing world, and only about 5 percent is allocated toward sub-Saharan Africa and its orphan crops. The publicly funded CGIAR system, historically the most effective and prolific development network for Third World agriculture, has an annual budget of $500 million. Those centers spend roughly $25 million directly improving the yield of orphans.

Despite this historical disparity, or perhaps because of it, Falcon is optimistic that big gains can be made in the yields of orphan crops if only we give them a chance.

"We've learned a lot from the big three that we can apply quickly to these new crops. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit, so to speak." If more funding was made available to these orphan crops, it is likely that large yield gains could be made quickly.

On the other hand, given the importance now of wheat, rice and maize to providing the world's raw calories (above 30 percent, and greater if including the amount used in animal feeds) - that reallocation decision is, according to Falcon, "a very nasty tradeoff."