Raoul A. Robinson (September 25, 1928 in
Saint Helier,
Jersey - 25 July 2014) was a
Canadian/British plant scientist with more than forty years of wide-ranging global experience in crop improvement for both commercial and
subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow food crops to meet the needs of themselves and their families on smallholdings. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements, with little or no su ...
. He is best known for his application of
system theory
Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structu ...
to crop
pathosystems and the elucidation of the concepts of
horizontal
Horizontal may refer to:
*Horizontal plane, in astronomy, geography, geometry and other sciences and contexts
*Horizontal coordinate system, in astronomy
*Horizontalism, in monetary circuit theory
*Horizontalism, in sociology
*Horizontal market, ...
and
vertical resistance The term vertical resistance, used commonly in context of plant selection, was first used by J.E. VanderplankVanderplank, J.E. (1963) Plant Diseases: Epidemics and Control. Academic Press, New York and London, 349pp. to describe single-gene resistan ...
and their implication on breeding for durable resistance.
Education
He was educated at
Victoria College, Jersey
Victoria College is a Government of Jersey, Government-run, Independent school, fee-paying, academically selective day school ,
[Victoria College Register 1929-56] and graduated from the
University of Reading in 1951.
Career
Over the course of his adventurous and productive career, Robinson concentrated most intensively on maize, potatoes, beans, and coffee. In addition, he has worked with cotton, tomatoes, dates, wheat, alfalfa, cocoa, cassava, coconut, tobacco, taro, sweet potato, vanilla, black pepper, and other crops.
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References
1928 births
2014 deaths
Canadian phytopathologists
Jersey academics
Alumni of the University of Reading
20th-century Canadian botanists
21st-century Canadian botanists
People from Saint Helier
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