Gordie C. Hanna (July 1, 1903 – December 23, 1993, known as "Jack" Hanna) was a
University of California-Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
agronomy
Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants by agriculture for food, fuel, fiber, chemicals, recreation, or land conservation. Agronomy has come to include research of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and ...
professor who helped revolutionize the
tomato
The tomato is the edible berry of the plant ''Solanum lycopersicum'', commonly known as the tomato plant. The species originated in western South America, Mexico, and Central America. The Mexican Nahuatl word gave rise to the Spanish word ...
-growing industry. He won the
John Scott Award
John Scott Award, created in 1816 as the John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium, is presented to men and women whose inventions improved the "comfort, welfare, and happiness of human kind" in a significant way. "...the John Scott Medal Fund, establish ...
in 1976 for his development of a tomato variety capable of being machine-harvested.
John Scott Award
John Scott Award, created in 1816 as the John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium, is presented to men and women whose inventions improved the "comfort, welfare, and happiness of human kind" in a significant way. "...the John Scott Medal Fund, establish ...
br>Award Recipients 1971-1980
accessed 29 September 2009 The variety came to be known as the "square tomato," being slightly blockier, preventing it from rolling off conveyor belts.
['']Columbus Dispatch
''The Columbus Dispatch'' is a daily newspaper based in Columbus, Ohio. Its first issue was published on July 1, 1871, and it has been the only mainstream daily newspaper in the city since ''The Columbus Citizen-Journal'' ceased publication in 1 ...
'', 25 March 2008
Shape shifting
/ref>
Career
Harvestable tomato variety
In the early 1940s, California’s tomato industry was threatened due to a lack of laborers to harvest the crops. In response, the UC Davis Agricultural Engineering department developed a mechanical tomato harvester. Unfortunately, the machine crushed the tomatoes. The University of California-Davis
The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a public land-grant research university near Davis, California. Named a Public Ivy, it is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University of California system. The institut ...
's Vegetable Crops department, led by Hanna, came to the rescue by breeding a firmer-skinned tomato.
However, he was tight-lipped about much of his early work. “When he first began trying to breed such a tomato in 1942, Hanna kept his idea to himself, unsure of what others at the university would think of it”.[UC Davis Plant Sciences]
Major Figures in the History of Plant Breeding at UC Davis: Gordie ("Jack") C. Hanna
, accessed 29 September 2009 “Perhaps for good reason: when his concept started to circulate, it was met with little support, in terms of both its technical feasibility and its anticipated negative impact on California agricultural labor.”[ Hanna's creation, variety VF145,][ became known as the square tomato, not because it was really square, but because its blockier shape prevented it from rolling off conveyor belts.][
]
Tomato harvester
The development of the world’s first mechanical harvesting tomato wasn’t Hanna’s only contribution to tomato production. With the harvestable tomato in hand, in 1961 he teamed up with UC Davis agricultural engineer Coby Lorenzen (who also won the John Scott Award
John Scott Award, created in 1816 as the John Scott Legacy Medal and Premium, is presented to men and women whose inventions improved the "comfort, welfare, and happiness of human kind" in a significant way. "...the John Scott Medal Fund, establish ...
in 1976[) to develop a harvester to reap the hardier variety of tomato.][ Engineering the equipment was no small challenge because tomato harvesting requires multiple functions, including cutting and lifting the vines, then separating the tomatoes from the vines.][UC Tomato Harvester Designated as Historic Landmark, UC Davis News & Information, Oct. 27, 2005](_blank)
/ref> During the 1950s, the UC Davis team refined the experimental harvester and in 1959 convinced a California company, Blackwelder Manufacturing, to commercialize the design. Within three years of its introduction, the proportion of California's tomato acreage planted with mechanically harvestable tomatoes rose from 7 percent to 85 percent.[
While mechanical harvesting was initially controversial because it seemingly displaced human labor, it reduced harvesting costs by nearly one half and eliminated an economic constraint on the US processing tomato industry, resulting in large increases in tomato acreage and yield. Those increases, in turn, provided additional employment in field work, transportation and processing that more than offset the displaced harvesting jobs.]
Hanna also bred most of California’s disease-resistant asparagus and developed several internationally produced sweet potato varieties.
References
External links
Photo of Hanna in 1951, from the UC Davis Library special collections
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hanna, Gordie Jack
1903 births
1993 deaths
American food scientists
University of California, Davis faculty