THE CAMBRIDGE PLANT BREEDING INSTITUTE

Abstract

The Plant Breeding Institute was founded in 1912, as the Cambridge University Plant Breeding Institute, under the directorship of Sir Rowland Biffen, who had demonstrated by that time that Mendel's newly discovered laws of heredity were applicable to characters of agricultural importance and had proved this by the introduction of the winter wheat variety Little Joss. During the next forty years, the Institute was principally concerned with work on the improvement of the cereal crops and produced such varieties as the winter wheats Yeoman and Holdfast and the barleys Pioneer and Proctor. Shortly after the 1939/45 war, it was decided to expand the work of the Institute. As a result its official connection with the University of Cambridge was broken, and it was established as a grant‐aided institute under the Agricultural Research Council in new premises at Trumpington, two miles south of Cambridge. These were opened by the Minister of Agriculture in 1955.

Citation

Lupton, F.G.H. (1971), "THE CAMBRIDGE PLANT BREEDING INSTITUTE", Nutrition & Food Science, Vol. 71 No. 3, pp. 12-13. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb058513