The Plant Breeding Institute was an agricultural research organisation in Cambridge in the United Kingdom between 1912 and 1987.
Founding
The institute was established in 1912 as part of the School of Agriculture at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
Rowland Biffen
Sir Rowland Harry Biffen FRS (28 May 1874, in Cheltenham – 12 July 1949) was a British botanist, mycologist, geneticist and a professor of agricultural botany at the University of Cambridge who worked on breeding wheat varieties. He was a ...
was the first director, and was close with
William Bateson
William Bateson (8 August 1861 – 8 February 1926) was an English biologist who was the first person to use the term genetics to describe the study of heredity, and the chief populariser of the ideas of Gregor Mendel following their rediscove ...
who was leading studies of heredity in Cambridge following the rediscovery of the pioneering genetic research of
Gregor Mendel
Gregor Johann Mendel, Augustinians, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinians, Augustinian friar and abbot of St Thomas's Abbey, Brno, St. Thomas' Abbey in Brà ...
in 1900.
Biffen began studying cereal breeding in the early 1900s with the aim of producing improved varieties for farmers and millers, and also to test whether Mendel's laws applied to wheat. He demonstrated that resistance to
yellow rust was a dominant trait and this culminated in 1910 in the release of the rust-resistant variety Little Joss, which was widely grown for decades and used as a parent for many other varieties.
[
The institute's site was to the west of Cambridge, and it shared land with the School of Agriculture that is today the site of the ]North West Cambridge development
The North West Cambridge Development is a University of Cambridge site to the north west of Cambridge city centre in England. The development is meant to alleviate overcrowding and rising land prices in Cambridge. The first phase resulted from ...
. The first research students were J. W. Lesley – who later made important contributions to the genetics of the tomato – and Frank Engledow
Sir Frank Leonard Engledow (20 August 1890 – 3 July 1985) was a British agricultural botanist who carried out research at the Plant Breeding Institute at the University of Cambridge from 1919 onwards. He was a fellow of St John's College, Cambr ...
, who later became Drapers Professor of Agriculture.[ Engledow described the facilities as "two acres of land on Gravel Hill Farm, a cage, a not very large shed and a small greenhouse."]
Work was initially mundane, consisting of recording the yields of different wheat varieties, but led to the release of Yeoman in 1916, which combined high yields with strength
Strength may refer to:
Physical strength
*Physical strength, as in people or animals
* Hysterical strength, extreme strength occurring when people are in life-and-death situations
*Superhuman strength, great physical strength far above human c ...
(the quality required for bread-making). During the First World War, research at the institute ground to a halt, but it began to rapidly expand afterwards and into the 1920s when two new research stations were attached to the institute, the Horticultural Research Station in 1922 and the Potato Virus Station in 1926. Redcliffe N. Salaman was the director of the latter until 1939.
The National Institute of Agricultural Botany
The National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) is a plant science research company based in Cambridge, UK.
The NIAB group
The NIAB group consists of:
* NIAB
* NIAB EMR - a horticultural and agricultural research institute at East M ...
was established in 1919 in order to separate the commercial aspects of varietal improvement from the more academic pursuits at the PBI. NIAB would distribute the seed of new varieties produced at the PBI, but only after testing showed them to be distinct and superior to existing varieties. This arrangement effectively discouraged workers at the PBI from developing new varieties and freed them to study plant physiology and genetics. In the 1920s, Engledow collaborated with the statistician Udny Yule
George Udny Yule FRS (18 February 1871 – 26 June 1951), usually known as Udny Yule, was a British statistician, particularly known for the Yule distribution.
Personal life
Yule was born at Beech Hill, a house in Morham near Haddingto ...
to develop techniques to analyse crop yields and published a series of papers on yield formation and associated traits in cereals. Salaman developed methods to test for the presence of viruses in seed potatoes and developed techniques to build up stocks of virus-free seed potatoes, a technique adopted by many other countries. Yeoman II was released in 1925 but was a commercial failure, and marked the high point of Mendelian thinking in UK plant breeding.
Biffen retired in 1936 and recommended Herbert Hunter, a barley breeder with close links to Guinness
Guinness () is an Irish dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate, Dublin, Ireland, in 1759. It is one of the most successful alcohol brands worldwide, brewed in almost 50 countries, and available in ove ...
and who had worked at the PBI since 1922, become the new director. Unlike his predecessor, Hunter disputed the necessity of Mendelian thinking to varietal improvement, instead believing that success relied on finding parents with desirable traits and crossing them with existing popular varieties. The appointment was doubted by Alfred Daniel Hall
Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, FRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall (22 June 1864 - 5 July 1942) was a British agricultural educationist and researcher who founded the Wye College in Kent.
Life
Hall was born in Rochdale, Lancashire where his fa ...
, the founder of Wye College
bio sciences -> social sciences -> business school
Pictures of OLT, Old Hall,Cloister, Parlour
-->
The College of St Gregory and St Martin at Wye, commonly known as Wye College, was an education and research institution in the village of Wye ...
because Hunter was "a plant breeder and not a geneticist". During the 1930s the PBI released high-yielding barley varieties, but their poor malting quality meant that they were not adopted by farmers.
George Douglas Hutton Bell
George Douglas Hutton Bell CBE FRS (18 October 1905 – 27 June 1993) was an English plant breeder who was director of the Plant Breeding Institute from 1947 to 1971. He bred Proctor, the first winter barley variety in the UK, and Maris Ot ...
was the director from 1940 to 1971. From the late 1940s to the 1960s, the low price of barley in comparison to meat made it an attractive animal feed, creating a niche for the PBI's barley varieties that led to them dominating the UK barley market.
Move to Trumpington
In 1948 it was announced that the institute would move from its site on Cambridge University Farm to a new site with improved facilities and more staff. At the same time, management would be transferred away from the university to a new independent body. The new site was opened in Trumpington
Trumpington is a village and parish to the south of Cambridge, England. The village is an electoral ward of the City of Cambridge and a ward of South Cambridgeshire District Council. The 2011 Census recorded the ward's population as 8,034.
T ...
, 2 miles south of Cambridge, in 1955.
Ralph Riley
Sir Ralph Riley (23 October 1924 – 27 August 1999) was a British geneticist.
He was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire in 1924 and served in the army during the Second World War. After the war he studied Botany at Sheffield University, foll ...
was the director from 1971 to 1978. Richard B. Flavell joined in 1969 and built up a large department investigating plant molecular genetics.
Privatisation
The institute was privatised in 1987 as part of Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
's government policies to divest from profitable industries and that "near-market" agricultural research should be funded by industry rather than the state. At the time the institute's wheat varieties had 90% of the UK market and 86% of the cereal acreage.[
]
The plant breeding parts of the institute were sold to Unilever
Unilever plc is a British multinational consumer goods company with headquarters in London, England. Unilever products include food, condiments, bottled water, baby food, soft drink, ice cream, instant coffee, cleaning agents, energy dri ...
for £68m, and sold on a year later to Monsanto
The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in ...
for £350m. The more research-orientated parts were moved to form 'The Cambridge Laboratory' in Norwich
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...
, which later merged with the John Innes Centre
The John Innes Centre (JIC), located in Norwich, Norfolk, England, is an independent centre for research and training in plant and microbial science founded in 1910. It is a registered charity (No 223852) grant-aided by the Biotechnology and B ...
. In 2004, Monsanto sold the wheat breeding part of the business to RAGT Seeds and in 2008 the institute moved from Trumpington to a new headquarters in Essex, between Sawston
Sawston is a large village in Cambridgeshire in England, situated on the River Cam about south of Cambridge. It has a population of 7,260.
History Prehistory
Although the current village of Sawston has only existed as anything more than a ha ...
and Saffron Walden
Saffron Walden is a market town in the Uttlesford district of Essex, England, north of Bishop's Stortford, south of Cambridge and north of London. It retains a rural appearance and some buildings of the medieval period. The population was 15, ...
. The impact of the privatisation on wheat breeding has been studied by several authors.
Notable cultivars
Barley
* Pioneer – the first winter-hardy malting barley[
* Proctor – a spring barley][
* ]Maris Otter
Maris Otter is a two-row, autumn sown variety of barley commonly used in the production of malt for the brewing industry. The variety was bred by Dr G D H Bell and his team of plant breeders at the UK's Plant Breeding Institute; the "Maris" ...
– a cross of Pioneer and Proctor that remains popular with craft brewers
Potatoes
* Maris Peer – an early potato variety
* Maris Piper
Maris Piper is the most widely grown potato variety in the United Kingdom accounting for 16% of the planted area in 2014. Introduced in 1966 it was one of the first potato varieties bred to be resistant to a form of potato cyst nematode, a major ...
– a maincrop potato variety with resistance to the potato cyst nematode ''Globodera rostochiensis
''Globodera rostochiensis'', commonly known as the golden nematode, golden eelworm or yellow potato cyst nematode, is a plant pathogenic nematode. It is a pest of plants in the family Solanaceae, primarily infesting potatoes and tomatoes, as well ...
''; the most popular UK potato variety since 1980
Wheat
* Maris Wigeon
Maris Widgeon is a heritage variety of wheat that has traditionally been used for thatching in the UK. This variety was developed in 1964 by the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridgeshire. The 'Maris' in the name, was derived from Maris Lane, the ...
* Yeoman
* Maris Huntsman
References
Further reading
''The Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture'', July 1922
– "The School of Agriculture of the University of Cambridge Part II", pp296–302
{{Coord, 52, 13, 5, N, 0, 5, 15, E, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title
Agricultural research institutes in the United Kingdom
1912 establishments in England
1987 disestablishments in England
Institutions of the University of Cambridge
Plant breeding