The Wolf Prize Committee for Agriculture has unanimously selected the following two candidates to equally share the 1989 Wolf Prize in Agriculture:
Peter Biggs
Agricultural and Food Research Council
Institute for Animal Health
Huntingdon, Cambs, United Kingdom
Michael Elliott
Agricultural and Food Research Council
Institute of Arable Crops Research
Rothamsted, Harpenden Harts, United Kingdom
for distinguished contributions to basic science and its successful translation into practice in the fields of animal health and crop protection.
Dr. Peter M. Biggs has carried out pioneering work on virus-induced tumors in domestic poultry, which were a major problem in intensive production systems. Work in his laboratory showed that both retroviruses and herpes viruses were implicated in these diseases. Work in other laboratories over the same period showed that the avian retroviruses could be divided into several sub-groups with resistance in the last being controlled by a single recessive gene. This work led to the development of methods for the selection of genetically determined resistant breeding stocks. Work on the epidemiology and pathology of the most severe forms of lymphoids tumors in poultry known as Marek´s disease after the author of the initial description of the condition, showed it to be due to an unusual type of herpes virus with a high affinity for cell binding. Further development of these findings led to the development of a novel vaccine which was in fact the first effective vaccine against a tumor condition in any species. This vaccine is now used for protection against Marek´s disease throughout the world where extensive poultry production is carried out. Throughout his career Professor Biggs has made major contributions and is a recognized leader in the field of animal health, having established and encouraged the use of the techniques of genetic engineering and biotechnology for the study of infectious diseases.
Dr. Michael Elliot has demonstrated scientific vision in the field of crop protection against insects. In the 1940´s he recognized that the naturally occurring insecticidal compounds of plant in the Composite (Sunflower family) Chrysanthemum cinevariaefolium known as pyrethroids had important crop protective potential but suffered from serious disadvantages of lack of potency, stability and selectivity. He, therefore, embarked on an imaginative program for the development of synthetic analogues of the naturally occurring compounds and produced two, resmethrin (1962) and bioresmethrin (1985) which had greatly enhanced potency and insect specificity, combined with low mammalian toxicity. These compounds were particularly effective for use in domestic and stored products, but were photodegradable and therefore relatively ineffective under the field conditions. By 1973 Dr. Elliott had produced further analogues which combined crop surface stability and insecticidal potency with exceptionally low mammalian toxicity; they also had the advantage over the organochlorine insecticides of being readily biodegradable in the soil without the formation of toxic residues. These compounds have proved to be of enormous economic Importance in the protection of a very wide variety of herbaceous and tree crops. At the fundamental level Dr. Elliott´s work has made possible the establishment of relationships between chemical structure and insecticidal activity in pyrethroids; improved the understanding of factors which determine photostability selectivity and mammalian toxicity and provided a series of steroisomers with contrasting insecticidal activities which are proving to be powerful tools for neurophysiological “site of action' studies.