Are Eelworms Resurrected?

Tuscan farmers would save wheat from one season to the next. Some crops would get blight and some wouldn't. What Fontano had found was that you could take a little drop of water and put it on the tip of a needle and bring it close to the grain of wheat. And if there were eelworms in the grain, even if they were desiccated, dry, seemingly dead, they would be revived by the freshness of the water. This solved the mystery of wheat blight, tiny worms. But how was it possible for them to come alive in this way?