Recognized as a world authority on greenhouse crop production and protected cultivation, Dr. Wittwer has conducted pioneering work on atmospheric carbon dioxide enrichment for enhancing the production of food crops and he has published over 750 research papers and scientific reports on these subjects.  He was chairman of the Board on Agriculture of the National Research Council (NRC) 1973-1977; a member of the Climate Research Board of the NRC 1979-1981, and organizer and co-chairman of the International Conference on Rising Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and its Effects on Plants held at Athens, GA, May 23-29, 1982.  He also co-chaired and organized the International Conference on Crop Productivity-Research Imperatives held at Boyne Highland, MI in October 1975 and again in October 1985.

Dr. Wittwer has served as a consultant to all International Agricultural Research Centers, all U.S. federal agencies, the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations of the United Nation's Development Program and the World Bank on problems relating to food production.  He has written extensively on technical developments in agriculture, food security, and prospects for human nourishment in the 21st century.

Dr. Wittwer was Director of the Michigan State University Agricultural Experiment Station for 20 years until his retirement in 1983 and is one of only two U.S. scientists to be elected to the V.I. Lenin All-Union Agricultural Academy of Sciences of the former USSR.  He is first author and editor of Feeding a Billion, a major treatise on frontiers in Chinese agriculture.  His most recent book (1995) is the highly acclaimed Food, Climate, and Carbon Dioxide: The Global Environment and World Food Production.