Weizmann Institute of Science Continues Research During War

Field experiments at the Gilat experimental station. (Photo: Ben Kelmer Weizmann Institute of Science)

As the war continues in Gaza, most Israelis need to continue with life as usual. And for Israeli scientists, like the ones at the world renowned Weizmann Institute of Science, this means continuing with their groundbreaking research activities on all manner of subjects, including agriculture.

Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science says that its field experiments with wheat in the northern Negev symbolize “hope and renewal” after the barbaric October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists in which more than 1,200 innocent civilians, including babies, were brutally murdered. They also continue a long-standing Israeli tradition of studying wheat genetics and evolution.

Prof. Avraham Levy and Naomi Avivi-Ragolsky of the Weizmann Institute of Science planned to conduct a field experiment with wheat this year at the Gilat experimental station, the southern branch of the Agricultural Research Organization of Israel’s Ministry of Agriculture, near Ofakim in the northern Negev. Among its other goals, the experiment was to address an ongoing dilemma in plant science: Is a “local hero” wheat variety, one adapted to the region’s environmental conditions, preferable to a “generalist,” a variety adapted to a broad range of conditions?

But on October 7, that entire region turned into a war zone in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel. Hundreds of rockets were fired from Gaza to the northern Negev; much of the wheat-growing region, known as Israel’s granary, was devastated, and its civilian population was displaced. Among the casualties of the massacre was the agronomist Ze’ev Hacker, head of field crops at Kibbutz Be’eri, who in previous years had assisted Levy with the field experiments. Hacker and his wife, Zehava, were murdered by terrorists who infiltrated the kibbutz.

“This is our way of showing that we never give up,” says Levy, who has been studying wheat for over 40 years.

Levy’s lab creates technologies for the precise transfer of beneficial genetic traits from wild species to cultivated varieties, using advanced genomic methods. The traits of interest found in wild wheat include the ability to grow with reduced amounts of fertilizers, and resistance to heat, drought and disease. These can help wheat crops adapt to new conditions, which is particularly crucial in light of the environmental crisis that endangers the food supply on our planet.

“Wheat does much more than human beings do,” says Prof. Moshe Feldman, Levy’s teacher, explaining why certain wheat varieties have so many genes – some 120,000, about five times more than the human genome. “For example, wheat generates carbohydrates, whereas humans get these nutrients from food. Unlike us, wheat needs to communicate with soil through its roots. And different wheat varieties grow throughout the world, so they need genes to help them adapt to diverse conditions.”