1926 | Agriculture
Agriculture
Agronomist Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, 28, gains notice for the first time in the Soviet Union. Elaborating on the ideas of horticulturist Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin, 70, that fly in the face of Mendelian genetics, Lysenko puts ideology ahead of science and will have enormous influence on Soviet farm policies (see 1935).
"Plant wizard" Luther Burbank dies at Santa Rosa, Calif., April 11 at age 77. He has manipulated hereditary traits by hybridizations made with little regard to the actual useful characteristics of the crossed parents.
Pioneer Hi-Bred International has its beginnings in a hybrid seed company founded at Des Moines by Iowa farmer-editor Henry A. (Agard) Wallace, 37, who initiated an Iowa Corn Yield Contest some years ago and won it himself in 1924 with a misshapen red-kerneled hybrid that he named Copper Cross (see Shull, 1921). Wallace's father, Henry C., died 2 years ago and Henry A. has gone into partnership with his brother James and corn breeder Raymond Baker. His idea, he will write in 1932, is to "improve corn by controlling its pollination. The best hybrids of the future will be so much better than the best hybrids of today that there will be no comparison." Wallace's company, started with $4,900 raised by selling 49 shares at $100 per share, will grow to have laboratories, greenhouses, fields, processing plants, and research stations operating in 90 countries and will sell 645 million pounds of seed corn per year.