Wheat Breeding Investigations at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge

1926 ◽  
Vol 18 (6) ◽  
pp. 516-518
Author(s):  
J. H. P.
Keyword(s):  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute

George Douglas Hutton Bell. 18 October 1905 – 27 June 1993

2004 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 35-38
Author(s):  
Ralph Riley ◽  
John Enderby
Keyword(s):  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Wheat Variety ◽  
Barley Grain ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Malting Quality ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute ◽  
The Government

Douglas Bell was the doyen of British plant breeders. He worked to turn what was previously a craft that made some use of science into a science–based technology.Having taken a first–class honours degree at the University College of Wales (Bangor), Bell went to the Cambridge University Plant Breeding Institute in 1928. There he worked under the supervision of F. L. (later Sir Frank) Engledow (FRS 1946). His PhD research concerned genetic variability in barley varieties, and barley remained his principal interest henceforth. At the height of his powers Bell was able rapidly to assess the agricultural potential of wide arrays of genetically distinct lines. This was based on keen observation and the ability to discriminate among many characteristics simultaneously. It often seemed like intuition. At the same time he was a keen judge of the malting quality of barley grain and was often called on to exercise his skill in competitions.After completing the PhD requirements, Bell continued to work with Engledow in the Cambridge School of Agriculture, first as a demonstrator and then as a lecturer. Generations of students praised the clarity of his lectures. From Engledow he inherited an interest in the components of yield in cereals. Starting with the number of ears per plant, spikelets per ear, grains per spikelet and grain weight he became interested in the physiology of yield. This subsequently led him to promote attempts to use physiological characteristics to predict yielding ability in the selection of new varieties. Also during this period Bell assisted Engledow in wheat breeding, work that resulted in the development of the breadmaking winter–wheat variety Holdfast.Bell's leadership in plant breeding came to its full realization when he became Director of the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), Cambridge, in 1947. The government had decided in the immediate postwar period to expand agricultural research in the UK. Numbers of free–standing research establishments were created with the general responsibility for them vested in the Agricultural Research Council. Under these arrangements the PBI was separated from Cambridge University. As Director, Bell together with the governing body set a policy for the institute. It was then his responsibility to choose a site (Trumpington, Cambridge), recruit a staff and plan the buildings and facilities including the farm.

Science and the Green Revolution 1945-1975

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Perkins
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soil Fertility ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Fungal Pathogens ◽  
Plant Disease ◽  
Green Revolution ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Wheat Varieties ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Major Factors

In the years after the end of World War II, farmers, agricultural scientists, and policy makers in many countries all knew, or learned, that higher yields of wheat were what they wanted, and they were successful in achieving them. Their specific motivations were different, but their objectives were not. Not only were the objectives clear, but a central method by which the higher yields were to be achieved was plant breeding. Plant breeding itself was an applied science that had to be nested within organizations that supported it and its allies in the agricultural, biological, and engineering sciences. By 1950 wheat breeders believed that the number of factors governing yield was small, which meant that the research avenues likely to be fruitful were also few in number. The amount of water available and the responsiveness to soil fertility, especially nitrogen, were in most cases the key ingredients for higher yields. For wheat, the ability of the plant to resist invasion by fungal pathogens was almost as important as water and soil fertility. Water and fertility were needed in every crop year, but damage from fungal pathogens varied with weather. Thus plant disease was not necessarily a destructive factor every year. Control of water, soil fertility, and plant disease was therefore at the center of research programs in wheat breeding. A wheat breeder would find success if his or her program produced new varieties that gave higher yields within the context of water, soil fertility, and plant disease existing in the area. Ancillary questions also existed and in some cases matched the major factors in importance. Weed control was always a problem, so high-yielding wheat had to have some capacity to resist competition from weeds. Similarly, in some areas and some years, insects could cause damage. Wheat varieties therefore had to be able to withstand them somehow. Other factors of importance to wheat breeders were habit of growth and the color and quality of the grain. Winter wheats were useful in climates that had winters mild enough to allow planting in the fall and thus higher yields the next summer.

Wheat Breeding : Coalescence of a Modern Science, 1900-1939

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Perkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
New Science ◽  
Slow Decline ◽  
Political Economic

Plant breeding in general and wheat breeding specifically were rudimentary activities on many grounds in the nineteenth century. Not many people engaged in the activity. Those who did were self-taught. because no formal educational programs existed in the subject. For the most part, they had only a few very modest institutional bases within which to work. Many farmers paid them little or no attention, and governments usually ignored their contributions and gave them next to no support. They had no organized way of broadly disseminating their results, which in any case were few in number. By 1970, wheat and other plant breeders occupied a very different position within both the scientific and political economic landscapes. Many people worked as breeders. They were highly trained in educational programs dedicated to the reproduction of plant breeders. Elaborate networks of institutions gave them employment. A substantial proportion of farmers cared very much what they did, and governments gave substantial, sometimes lavish, support. They had means of communicating their work that included both scientific and popular outlets. And they had substantial results to convey to farmers and the general public, some of them remarkable either for their scientific cleverness or for their broad political, economic, and ecological impacts, or both. Another way of gaining perspective on the change in status of wheat and other plant breeders is to suggest that their absence might not have been noticed by anybody but their families had they suddenly disappeared in the nineteenth century. In contrast, the twentieth century came increasingly to depend upon the plant breeders. Cessation of wheat breeding after 1970, for example, would have put some agricultural systems in distinct danger of slow decline or even collapse and failure. In both political economic and ecological terms, an increasing portion of the global human community became absolutely dependent upon wheat breeders and other plant scientists, certainly for prosperity as we now know it and possibly for survival and security. The transformation of wheat breeding from nearly invisible to virtually indispensable resulted from two mutually interacting events: a commercial-industrial revolution in agriculture and construction of a new science of plant breeding.

A comparison of spring barley grown in England and in Scotland. 2. Yield and its components

1980 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. Ellis ◽  
E. J. M. Kirby
Keyword(s):  
Grain Size ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Climatic Factors ◽  
Spring Barley ◽  
Relative Difference ◽  
Golden Promise ◽  
Main Shoot ◽  
Breeding Station ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute ◽  
Plant Breeding Station

SummaryYields of two spring barley varieties, Golden Promise and Maris Mink, were greater at the Scottish Plant Breeding Station (SPBS) than at the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) in both 1976 and 1977. In both seasons more ears per plant were produced and the number of grains per ear was greater at the SPBS. Weight per grain was greater at the Scottish Plant Breeding Station in both 1976 and 1977, but the distribution of grain size along the ears differed between seasons. Grain at the tip of the ears of plants grown at SPBS in 1976 was lighter than the corresponding grain on the Cambridge-grown plants. In 1977 the SPBS-grown plants had heavier grains at all the main shoot spikelet positions. At the SPBS the relative difference between main shoot and tillers 1 and 2 was smaller than at the PBI.These results are taken to indicate that the combination of climatic factors in Scotland affects plant development in such a way that intraplant competition is reduced and more spikelet primordia survive to form grains and more tillers produce fertile ears.

DANKO WINTER RYE

1986 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 997-998 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. LANGILLE ◽  
H. G. NASS ◽  
J. S. BUBAR ◽  
R. W. JONES ◽  
R. B. WALTON
Keyword(s):  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Secale Cereale ◽  
Kernel Weight ◽  
Winter Survival ◽  
Winter Rye ◽  
Lodging Resistance ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute ◽  
Secale Cereale L ◽  
Cultivar Description ◽  
Breeder Seed

Danko is a winter rye (Secale cereale L.) cultivar with higher yield, better lodging resistance and winter survival and higher kernel weight and test weight than Animo and Kustro, the current most commonly grown cultivars in the Maritimes. It was developed at the Polish Plant Breeding Institute, Poznan, Poland where breeder seed will be maintained. Seed will be distributed by King Grain Ltd.Key words: Secale cereale L., rye (winter), cultivar description

scholarly journals DR FRANCIS GEOFFREY HUGH LUPTON 16 July 1921–23 May 2006Dr Lupton, a distinguished plant breeder, was editor of Experimental Agriculture for 11 years from 1984 to 1995

2007 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graham Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Agricultural Research ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Plant Breeder ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Agricultural Research Council ◽  
Active Service ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute ◽  
To Come

My first encounter with Francis Lupton was as one of a group of students from Aberystwyth visiting the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) at Cambridge, UK, as part of an Easter vacation tour in 1954. We were given a presentation, delivered with military precision, on wheat breeding by a tall, rather thin young man with a distinctly authoritative voice. Lupton had returned to Cambridge after the war to complete his interrupted studies, after seeing active service in the Middle East, Italy and Greece where he took part in some of the bitterest fighting, about which he characteristically said little. After graduating, he joined the PBI, under the directorship of G. D. H. Bell, in 1948. The Institute, which had previously been part of Cambridge University, had been hived off after the war to come under the aegis of the Agricultural Research Council. Lupton was assigned to the wheat breeding programme, thereby inheriting the mantle of Biffen and Engledow.

Hybrid necrosis as a problem in handling hexaploid × tetraploid wheat crosses

1980 ◽  
Vol 94 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. S. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Hexaploid Wheat ◽  
Tetraploid Wheat ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Hybrid Necrosis ◽  
Agronomic Characters ◽  
Wheat Varieties ◽  
Hybrid Plants ◽  
Plant Breeding Institute ◽  
Selection For

SummaryA tetraploid wheat breeding programme was initiated at the Plant Breeding Institute in 1970. Hexaploid × tetraploid wheat crosses were expected to contribute to the improvement of the tetraploid wheats but severe hybrid necrosis caused the death of the pentaploid Fxhybrid plants in most crosses. The genotypes of tetraploid wheat selections derived from crosses involving Rampton Rivet, a non-carrier of Neu were determined by test crossing to hexaploid wheat varieties which were known to carry the Neim allele. Similarly, hexaploid wheat selections which did not carry Ne2 were identified from crosses involving Maris Ranger by test crossing to durum selections which carried the Nef allele. By the careful choice of one parent, hexaploid x tetraploid wheat crosses were then made which avoided the hybrid necrosis problem. Segregation of the Ne% gene was as expected but selection for agronomic characters appeared to favour the retention of the dominant allele of the Ne1gene. Nevertheless, test crossing on a relatively small scale still identified many non-carriers.

ANALYSIS OF THE WINTER WHEAT CERTIFIED SEED MARKET

2017 ◽  
Vol XIX (2) ◽  
pp. 158-164
Author(s):  
Dariusz Majrzchycki ◽  
Benedykt Pepliński
Keyword(s):  
Winter Wheat ◽  
Plant Breeding ◽  
Certified Seed ◽  
Wheat Breeding ◽  
Market Position ◽  
Seed Reproduction ◽  
Seed Market

The aim of this study was to analyse of the of the winter wheat certified seed market, especially market position of Polish plant breeding in years 2010-2016. It was found that during the analyzed period position of Polish winter wheat breeding companies deteriorated significantly. This quantity of varieties which are in the National List of Cultivar and seed reproduction, as well as participate in the surface of the seed qualification. The largest domestic wheat breeder was the company DANKO and the biggest foreign was company KWS Lochow.

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