Ergot: From Blight to Blessing
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The fungus grows on small grains like rye, oats, and wheat, growing naturally in damp, cool growing seasons. It makes its way into the "staff of life," bread, with stunningly dramatic consequences. As examples, the Assyrians, 600-500 BC, used ergot as a biological weapon by contaminating their enemies' wells with ergot, and in 945 CE, 40,000 died in Paris of the "Plague of Fire" caused by ergotism.
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With the development of chemistry, the alkaloids of ergot became the basis of medicines, saving lives, not taking them. There are many stories imbedded into the ergot story, all shared in the permanent ergot exhibit. These include LSD, witchcraft, CIA and midwifery. In fact, the Universal Labs building itself is part of the display, as most of the world's ergot supply traveled through this building in the 1950s and 1960s.
Ergot, a truly fascinating fungus, is a medical story that reaches all around the world and back in time to the beginning of agriculture 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. Ergotism, a disease caused from ingesting ergot, was a blight on humanity causing death by gangrene and by attacking the neurological system.
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Seed Corn: From Maize to Amazing
​The hybridization of seed corn was named by Time magazine as one of the one hundred “most significant events that have shaped our world during the past 1,000 years.” Dassel is part of that story. It is remarkable that such a northern location as Meeker County, Minnesota, could become “The Seed Corn Capital of the Northwest.” Farmers, beginning in the late years of the 19th century, began developing varieties of seed corn that were able to thrive here. When the open pollination method of improving seed corn had been taken as far as it could, hybridization became the answer. Beginning in the 1930s Dassel companies established research programs and developed inbred strains for use in producing hybrid seed. Dassel seed corn has been and continues to be distributed widely.
Note: The Seed Corn exhibit is semi-permanent and may be removed from time to time to accommodate other space needs.
