Sir Rowland Biffen FRS (1874–1949), geneticist and agricultural botanist

Rowland Biffen was Director of the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge from its foundation in 1912, until his retirement in 1936. He was a member of the JI Council from 1909-1921. Biffen was offered the Directorship of the John Innes Horticultural Insititution in 1926, the JI Council of the time were unanimous in regarding him as the individual best qualified to undertake the duties of Director. He expressed his willingness to consider the invitation to take up the Directorship in April of that year, but withdrew his candidature in June.

Biffen's research interests were founded in cereal rust, in which he made outstanding advances in genetics and wheat breeding. After William Bateson's (JI's first Director) rediscovery of Mendel's principles, Biffen soon began assembling wheat and barley from around the world to study variation and hybridization.

He, more than any other of his time, should be given credit for the scientific foundations of plant breeding with orderly synthesis displacing mysticism and guesswork and he proved the application of Mendelian principles for a wide range of wheat plant characteristics.

His discovery that immunity to rust was a single recessive character was crucially important in the development of genetics. He maintained that "plant breeding was a game of chance played between man and plants, the chances seemingly in favour of the plants".

The first decade of the last century was the establishment period of genetics with Bateson as the builder on Mendel's foundations and Biffen the supplier of material.

Following privitisation, the non-privatised section of the Plant Breeding Institute became a part of the John Innes in 1990 with staff moving into a newly constructed building, named the Biffen Building. The John Innes Centre is steeped in the history of genetics and houses a History of Genetics Library comprising over 4000 volumes which includes a scrapbook on the work of Rowland Biffen. Today, research continues on the genetics of disease resistance in cereals in the Biffen Building.

Working with the Grain

The image below is a watercolour by Mrs Leonie Woolhouse depiciting the scientific interests and it's impact on modern agriculture of Biffen's work. It is possible to 'zoom' in and around the image via your mouse or the controls at the bottom of the image.

Reproduced from an original by Leonie Woolhouse.