Elvin Charles Stakman (May 17, 1885 – January 22, 1979) was an American plant pathologist who was a pioneer of methods of identifying and combatting disease in wheat.

degree in German, botany and political science, Stakman taught school for a couple of years, before joining the plant pathology department at the University of Minnesota as an assistant professor.

[7] Beginning in 1918, Stakman organized a campaign to eradicate barberries, an alternate host of black stem rust fungus that affected about 1/3 of the United States.

[4] Through work that he began as part of his Ph.D. on black stem rust (Puccinia graminis), Stakman disproved the prevalent theory of "bridging hosts", the belief that the fungus could develop new parasitic capabilities to spread from rye to barley to (previously immune) wheat.

They showed that urediospores of P. graminis tritici were carried from as far away as Mexico and Texas to Canada and North Dakota, over 2000 miles, affecting early-sown wheat.

Borlaug went on to discover varieties of dwarf wheat that helped reduce famine in India, Pakistan, and other countries, and received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1970.