In October 1940 the Council approves C D Darlington’s plans for the temporary evacuation of JIHI in an emergency. To minimise the expense of removal Darlington suggests that it would be desirable to select a site that will also be suitable as a permanent home. With Daniel Hall’s help Darlington has begun to explore the possibility of moving the JIHI to Waterperry House, a stately home and estate lying in a loop of the River Thames, seven miles east of Oxford. The house, the property of Magdalen College, Oxford, is in use as a Horticultural School for training girls in practical gardening. Early in 1941 negotiations for taking over the lease of Waterperry break down. The reduction in staff due to war work removes the urgency of finding new accommodation and plans for a new and larger site for the Institution are postponed until after the war.

Three of the scientific staff, J. R. Price (biochemist), H. N. Barber and H. G. Callan (cytologists), are engaged in temporary technical work for the Government. Dr G. H. Beale (geneticist) is in the army.

All of the student gardeners and three of the permanent garden staff are in the armed forces. These men are partly replaced by four junior students, who are later replaced by women gardeners. The garden staff overall has been reduced from 33 to 22. This depleted workforce also has Air Raid Protection duties and regular fire watching to carry out. The reduced labour available means the usual work of the Institution is no longer possible. However, the laborious genetic experiments have been largely replaced by research on food crops, including onions, tomatoes, leeks, carrots, beet and cabbages. In the greenhouses M. B. Crane supervises a programme of tomato and cucumber seed production to supply the seed firm Messrs Carter and Sons. The Institution also begins to cultivate species of drug plants in co-operation with the Therapeutic Requirements Committee of the Medical Research Council, in particular, strains of Digitalis purpurea for the production of ‘digitalin’.

Listen:

Listen to Dan Lewis explaining why cucumber production was important during the war (to miners)!, taken from an interview with BJ Harrison; 1991

The Institution’s first fruit out-station (in Godstone, Surrey) was arranged by A D Hall in 1931. By 1940 JIHI has twelve stations distributed in seven counties for testing the seedling fruits that result from JIHI’s fruit breeding work (apples, blackberries, cherries, plums, strawberries and pears) on an approximate total of 10 acres. All of this space is given to the JIHI rent and cultivation free.

War has significantly changed the nature of the trials. For example, the 1000 seedling pear trees planted in February 1941 at the Lord Wandsworth Agricultural College, Long Sutton, Hampshire receive no spraying programme for disease control, nor any pruning, manuring or other cultivations after 1943 owing to war-time difficulties. These conditions, though accidental, provide valuable information on scab resistance.

In 1946 five of JIHI’s seedling cherries (Merton Favourite, Merton Heart, Merton Premier, and Merton Bounty) in the National Fruit Trials at the Kent Farm Institute are given awards by the Royal Horticultural Society. These seedlings were raised in 1921-3. It has taken about 25 years to determine their commercial possibilities.

In 1940 raising tomatoes out of doors is a relatively new practice; traditionally tomatoes are grown in glasshouses. The Pomology Department at JIHI begins a series of experiments on varieties of tomatoes grown out of doors to determine yield, times of maturity, and other characters. These form part of an experiment to compare the best varieties and the best F1 hybrids with a view to using hybrid vigour in practical cultivation. Altogether 45 varieties are grown and the results of the trials are published as John Innes Leaflet no. 5 (1942). The breeding programme aims to bring forward tomato maturing dates to make outdoor growing viable; breeding and selection with bush and dwarf forms to produce a new type is also in progress. In 1947 work begins on rogue tomatoes (off-type plants); the aim is to reduce the percentage of rogues in tomato crops by determining the genetic or physiological cause.

One of the successful varieties raised at Merton is ‘Puck’, a dwarf tomato released in 1946 and notable for its good pollen and fruit setting qualities even in low-temperature conditions. Puck is later used as a parent, particularly in Canada, to introduce these characters into other tomatoes.

In 1940 Mather is two years into his appointment as Head of the newly formed Department of Genetics at JIHI. Since beginning his career he has gained experience in chromosomes from C. D. Darlington, in plant breeding techniques from J. V. Rasmusson at Svalöf in Sweden, in statistics and experimental design from R. A. Fisher at University College, London, and in Drosophila genetics and evolutionary theory from A. H. Sturtevant and T. Dobzhansky in California.

Mather’s consuming interest is in the genetics of quantitative characters. Early in his career, plant breeder Sir Frank Engledow told him: ‘If you are interested in genetics and want to help the plant breeder you should study the inheritance of quantitative characters such as yield and height’ and this message has been reinforced through Mather’s association with Svalöf and with Fisher. Using Fisher’s statistical techniques, Mather sets himself the problem of analysing the genetics of quantitative variations.  His aim is to answer questions of economic importance in plant breeding and, also, to further understanding of the role of quantitative variation in natural populations and the mechanism of evolution.

Most existing selection and biometrical experiments so far have been done on a one-worker, one organism basis on subjects such as chickens, mice, fruit flies and maize. Mather’s diverse research background means he is able to take full advantage of data from more than one organism. Each organism has complementary experimental advantages: Mather uses especially Drosophila (ideal for multi-generation selection experiments) and inter-fertile plant species such as Petunia axillaries and P. violacea, Antirrhinum majus and A. glutinosum (excellent material for studying the effects of polygenes on natural breeding systems). All of the Drosophila workers in Mather’s lab also work on plants so that results quickly obtained from fruit flies can be integrated into the planning and interpretation of long-term experiments on plants.

Quantitative characters (characters that show a continuous range of variation in their expression) follow Mendelian inheritance but are the result of the action of many genes each with a small effect, some positive and some negative, and some, but not all, showing dominance. These genes interact with each other and with the environment to determine the course of development of the organism. In Europe these effects have been discussed by geneticists as ‘polymeric inheritance’ and in the United States as ‘multiple factor theory’, which has been applied to guide observations on the inheritance of size, yield, height and other measurable traits (Dunn, 1961, p. 100). Mather coins the term ‘polygenes’ to describe these genes and during the 1940s develops his own theory of polygenic inheritance.  His first paper on polygenic variation is published in 1941 and by 1945 seven more have followed. The early work of the biometricians and Mendelians, and Mather’s own work with his collaborators at John Innes, Brian Harrison and Lambert Wigan, is synthesized into the first book on Biometrical Genetics in 1949. This book is the first to emphasize the estimation of genetic components of variance for plant populations and explains the basis of quantitative genetic analyses. Its publication marks Mather’s rise to prominence as one of the most distinguished geneticists of his time and his role as founder of post-war developments in the field.

See also:

L. C. Dunn, A short history of genetics: the development of some of the main lines of thought, 1864-1939, Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991 (First published 1965).

Kenneth Mather, Biometrical Genetics, New York: Dover Publications, 1949.

Michael Lawrence, ‘Professor Sir Kenneth Mather’, Genetical Society Newsletter, 5 (July 1990): 4-5.

Dan Lewis, ‘Kenneth Mather 1911-1990’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 38 (1992): 249-266.

A selection of Mather’s early articles on polygenic inheritance

As a result of the publication of leaflets (10,000 distributed by 1941) and of broadcasts by M. B. Crane and W. J. C. Lawrence, the advisory work of the JIHI multiplies several times over. Between 1939 and 1942 the Pomology Department receives over five thousand public enquiries. This work has brought JIHI into a closer relationship with horticulturalists in the practical and educational sphere. It has also led to the adoption of JIHI’s improved methods of raising garden crops. In mid-1941 JIHI estimates that in England 40% of the larger commercial growers and 17% of the smaller ones have adopted the use of John Innes composts. The advance has been less rapid in Scotland. During the 1940s there are many requests for talks on the JI composts and on the new methods of cultivation under glass.

In 1943-44 the first instructional film is taken at John Innes, a colour cinema film to illustrate John Innes Leaflet no. 4, ‘The fertility rules in fruit planting’ (30,000 copies of this leaflet have been distributed since its publication in 1941). The first sequences shot include pollen development, fertilization, and fruit formation. The film is aimed at fruit farmers and teachers.

At California Institute of Technology, USA, George Beadle and Edward Tatum’s experiments on the red bread mould Neurospora crassa show that the function of genes is to direct the formation of enzymes which regulate chemical events. They propose that in general each gene directs the formation of one (and only one) enzyme – affirming the ‘one gene, one enzyme’ hypothesis. This hypothesis, which Hickman and Cairns (2003) argue began with French biologist Lucien Cuénot in 1903, is usually attributed to Archibald Garrod and his pioneering work on ‘inborn errors of metabolism’ (1908). William Bateson also suggested in 1909 that certain Mendelian traits were due to the presence or absence of an enzyme.

For further information on Beadle and Tatum’s experiments:

• http://www.genome.gov/25520248
• http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/166/1/1

For a discussion of Archibald Garrod’s seminal lecture series (1908):

• http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1P3-1487595401.html

For a discussion of the history of the ‘one gene, one enzyme’ concept:

• http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/163/3/839

In 1942 Mather publishes a critique of the Russian government’s opposition to genetics in Nature. Unlike many fellow geneticists he does not emphasize the unscientific nature of plant science in Russia under the leadership of Trofim Lysenko but gives a measured appraisal of the development of genetics over 40 years. He acknowledges that genetics has neglected aspects that are of importance to the breeder (that is, the study of quantitative characters) and has consequently disappointed those looking for a practical return. Affirming his commitment to the study of polygenes Mather concludes: ‘What is required is experimental research in polygenic behaviour, so that genetical theory may be enlarged until the full potential value of genetics to evolutionist and breeder is realized’.

See also:

Dan Lewis, ‘Kenneth Mather 1911-1990’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 38 (1992): 249-266, on pp. 258-59.

Nils Roll-Hansen, 'The Lysenko effect: undermining the autonomy of science', Endeavour, 29, Issue 4, December 2005, Pages 143-147

To help plant breeders who are struggling to maintain the shortfall in seed supplies arising from the loss of imports from central Europe, workers at JIHI set out to solve the problem of establishing the adequate isolation distances of seed crops to ensure the purity of the stock. Kenneth Mather, M. B. Crane and A. J. Bateman devise and execute experiments to measure the amount of pollen carried over distances from 1 to 100 metres. The work begins with radishes and turnips (self-incompatible and insect pollinated), beet (self-incompatible and wind-pollinated), and maize (self-compatible and wind-pollinated) and is extended to other crops. Their findings are surprising in that after 1-2 metres the pollen flow falls to very low levels with no further reduction over 100 metres; this is in sharp contrast to the repeated references of growers to much larger contamination distances. The practical result is that the land used for seed production can be reduced without fear of increasing the contamination. Bateman’s experiments are published in a series of papers in Journal of Genetics (1947 (Aug.), 48: 257-275) and Heredity (1947 (Oct. & Dec.), 1: 235-46 and 303-36).

Colchicine, a poisonous alkaloid drug obtained from the seed and corm of the autumn crocus (Colchicum autumnale), is introduced as a research tool in plant breeding work at JIHI. Since the mid-1930s there has been an explosion of publications on colchicine around the world, particularly from 1938 to 1942, after a research group in the pathology lab at the University of Brussels established that this molecule acts dramatically upon mitosis in animal and plant tissues. The migration of colchicine research from medicine to plant breeding is accelerated when geneticist Albert Blakeslee of the Carnegie Institution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, reports in 1937 that colchicine produces polyploidy in plants. Such is the interest in the general cellular effect of colchicine in biological communities that scientists are talking about a ‘colchicine fad’.

The first recorded experiments on colchicine at JIHI take place in 1937 in the Cytology Department as part of their research on cell division. Colchicine is of interest because it implies control over dividing cells, and chromosomal numbers in plant cells frequently double after treatment (because colchicine inhibits the spindle fibres so that sets of divided chromosomes fail to separate and are enclosed in a common nuclear membrane). The multiplication of chromosomes is also often associated with desirable traits in the plants such as being larger in size and more robust. Hence the ‘Colchicine Method’ is seen as potentially useful for making artificial polyploids (plants with cells that contain multiple, complete sets of chromosomes). In many cases colchicine is found to be much more effective in inducing polyploidy than the ‘heat-shock’ treatments that are already in use.

By the early 1940s many experiments are underway at JIHI to produce new polyploids. These studies have gathered sufficient momentum by 1943 for C D Darlington to announce ‘the invention of new methods of making polyploid plants’ (by P. T. Thomas in the Pomology Department) as a major branch of plant breeding work at JIHI. The intention is that the new polyploids will be used either to produce new hybrids, or to preserve existing hybrids by restoring their fertility. For the first time the prospect of creating new ‘synthetic’ plants is opened up and the term ‘genetics engineer’ is already in circulation. Much later, the possession of this new molecular tool was important in getting biologists to think of biological processes in molecular terms (Goodman 1998).

See also:

Jordan Goodman, ‘Plants, Cells and Bodies: The Molecular Biography of Colchicine, 1930-1975’, pp. 17-46 in Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga (eds), Molecularizing Biology and Medicine, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1998.

M. Crane and D. Lewis, ‘Genetical studies in pears’, Journal of Genetics, 43 (1942): 31-43.

[Gordon Haskell], ‘Making new plants: the Colchicine Method’, in The Fruit, the Seed and the Soil, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1949 and later editions.

O. J. Eigsti and P. Dustin Jr., Colchicine in Agriculture, Medicine, Biology and Chemistry, Ames, Iowa: Iowa State College Press, 1955.

The success of penicillin stimulated Selman Waksman, a soil microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, in 1940 to examine the collection of actinomycete bacteria that he had assembled over thirty years for antibiotic production. Soon after, in1943, Waksman’s group discovers streptomycin, a natural product made by the bacteria Streptomyces griseus. By 1947 streptomycin – commercialised by the American pharmaceutical company Merck and Co., who had supported Waksman’s research- proves to be wonderfully successful against tuberculosis, a major killer disease worldwide for which there has been no effective drug treatment.  Streptomycin is also effective against several other diseases and its discovery is followed by the finding of many further antibacterial and antifungal drugs. The actinomycetesshoot to fame from relative obscurity and many actinomycete products are discovered in the 1950s and 1960s in a period afterwards regarded as the ‘Golden Age’ of antibiotic discovery. Streptomyces genetics will form a major line of research at John Innes after 1968.

See also:

Biographical information on Selman Waksman:

For a history of research on Streptomyces see:

David Hopwood, Streptomyces in nature and medicine: the antibiotic makers, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

The biennial summer courses in cytology and genetics held at the John Innes from 1928 to 1938 have been interrupted by war. These courses were introduced to try and remedy the shortage of recruits trained in genetics. Between 1943 and 1948 Kenneth Mather re-introduces the tradition of providing genetics training at JIHI with a series of working courses, held each year in July and August, for the special service of the Genetics Department. Nevertheless the Institution still finds itself, like other research stations, lacking applicants trained in plant breeding. The Institution has to recruit staff from other countries, from non-botanical departments, or engage undergraduates for training. There is still a pressing need for the establishment of new genetics departments in British universities to produce the new generations of geneticists.

W J C Lawrence has achieved highly standardised techniques for the preparation and use of seed and potting composts; he now has ambitions to standardise the methods of handling plants. Fulfilling this objective involves the Garden Department at JIHI in many experiments to test the effects of various plant treatments between 1943 and 1950. The results, summarized in Lawrence’s Science and the Glasshouse (1948, 1950), bring the standard of cultivation at Bayfordbury to new heights.

The experiments begin in February 1943 when Lawrence and John Newell notice that two pans of tomato seedlings, differing only in pricking-out dates, show marked differences in growth. Lawrence’s follow-up experiments confirm that early pricking-out gives much better growth. Lawrence is guided by Kenneth Mather in experimental design and statistical analysis of the results. His findings are against traditional horticultural methods which pre-suppose that it is better to move seedlings when they have grown to a decent size, rather than when they are young and delicate. In tomatoes the gain from early pricking out is found to be 25 per cent early yield. Lawrence publicises the advantages of early pricking-out and other plant treatments in illustrated public lectures and leaflets.

See also:

W. J. C. Lawrence, Catch the tide: adventures in horticultural research, London: Grower Books, 1980.

Until 1944 damage to the Institution from enemy attacks has been slight. Only one bomb, which fell in the Old Garden in May 1941, directly damaged the premises. A serious attack in the neighbourhood in February 1944 also leaves the Institution unscathed. The flying bomb offensive launched in June 1944 is more prolonged, and in the Merton locality, more dangerous than previous attacks. One of the first flying bombs kills the Assistant Secretary to the Council of JIHI.

Between June and August 1944 eight flying bombs damage the buildings and private houses of the Institution but there are no further casualties. The last of these bombs, falling on the Sunday afternoon of August 20th, causes extensive blast damage to glasshouses, and the windows, roofs and ceilings of JIHI’s main buildings; the main water pipes are also fractured. Despite a general scene of ‘appalling desolation’ no books are destroyed and very little apparatus lost. Nor is there any structural damage to the buildings. Most of the immediate problems with the buildings are quickly rectified and within a fortnight work is again possible. The glasshouses take longer to replace- it is not until November that glass (cloudy glass) becomes available. Many of the trees, crops and experimental plants are ruined and some (for example, the entire Antirrhinum crop) are totally obliterated. As a result of the damage the greater part of the breeding work of the year is spoiled, jeopardized or delayed.

 

Since H. C. Osterstock’s death in 1942 the Institution has felt the need of a means of representing fruits, flowers and microscopic objects in colour. They could not expect to replace Ostertock in skill of painting but in 1944 obtain the advice of an expert colour photographer, G. D. H. Waddington. The Institution purchases new photographic equipment and Waddington agrees to make a series of colour photographs of important fruits, flowers and vegetables, and especially new varieties raised by the Institution. Waddington also trains Len La Cour and Gavin Brown in the ordinary techniques of colour photography. A new senior photographer, L. S. Clarke, is appointed in July 1948 to fill Osterstock’s long-vacant position.

Physician and medical researcher Oswald Avery at Rockefeller University Hospital in New York City, with co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty, shows that DNA can transform the properties of cells. Avery and his team’s experiments on Streptococcus pneumoniae followed up the work of Frederick Griffith who in 1928 showed that some component of heat-killed virulent bacteria can ‘transform’ a non-virulent strain to become virulent. Avery and his colleagues working in the early 1940s demonstrated that the ‘transforming principle’ identified by Griffith was not some kind of protein as had been supposed but was a substance rich in nucleic acids. This agent (DNA) was able to produce heritable change in organisms. Avery’s work helped clarify the chemical nature of genes but scientists, who thought that chromosomal proteins carried hereditary information, were sceptical until the early 1950s. By that time biochemists no longer regarded DNA simply as a structural chemical in chromosomes with a relatively unimportant role but as the key transmitter of genetic traits.

See: http://www.genome.gov/25520250

Barbara McClintock, working on colour variations in maize at Cornell University and later at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, develops the hypothesis that genes can jump around on chromosomes. The classical model of genetics at this time assumed that genes had fixed positions on chromosomes but McClintock’s experiments suggest that genes can be transposed from one position to another. During the 1940s and 1950s McClintock’s microscopic studies of this phenomenon show how genes turn physical characteristics on or off. McClintock’s astonishing finding that genes can move was not accepted by the biological community for many years since it conflicted sharply with the assumptions underlying the core work of geneticists. The construction of linkage maps and the physical mapping of genes onto chromosomes presupposed a regular relationship among genes. The importance of McClintock’s work on transposition was not widely recognised until the late 1960s, and only then after the discovery of similar jumping genes in the bacterium Escherichia coli, wherein they could be studied much more precisely by molecular methods, which put their existence beyond doubt. Jumping genes (now called transposons) were subsequently found in all kinds of organisms from bacteria to humans. McClintock was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983.

For further biographical information see:

• http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1983/mcclintock-autobio.html
• http://www.nap.edu/html/biomems/bmcclintock.html

On 18th May 1945 Britain and her western allies celebrate victory over Hitler’s army. The war is over in Europe but the problem of adequately feeding the nation remains. Food rationing, which was introduced in Britain in 1940, will remain in place until 1953. Raising the home-production of food remains a priority for Government.

See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/timeline/

In 1943 the John Innes Trustees approach the Charity Commissioners for sanction to sell the land and buildings at Merton and to acquire a new property. With permission obtained, C. D. Darlington is asked to look for a suitable site for relocating the Institution. The flying bomb damage in August 1944 adds urgency to the search. Darlington considers forty possible sites before finding one in March 1945 that seems to satisfy the varied requirements of the Institution. This is Bayfordbury Park in Hertfordshire located 16 miles north of London on the edge of the green belt, overlooking the River Lea and standing one mile southwest of Hertford. The Trustees agree to purchase the mansion, farm buildings, stables and cottages and most of the land (together including 372 acres) and the purchase is completed on 12 December 1945. The new setting for the Institution is rather grand: the 80-room mansion, framed by magnificent cedars, was built in 1759 by William Baker and is set in a mature park designed by John Claudius Loudon. In recent years (until September 1945) the estate has been let to Dr Barnardo’s Homes.

As ‘Curator of the gardens’, W J C Lawrence is charged with the task of designing the new glasshouses at Bayfordbury. He has to begin ‘with not a single piece of scientifically derived information on glasshouse design’. He starts to systematically monitor the effects of orientation, ventilation and heating systems. Model glasshouses are constructed at Merton to test orientation effects. This data helps Lawrence to formulate plans for the Bayfordbury glasshouses; these are prepared ‘to make the whole new construction into a large experiment’. Topics for investigation include the behaviour and durability of glasshouse materials; efficiency of natural light and heat loss under different designs; variables affecting glasshouse climatology; efficiency of ventilation, and the effect of humidity.The Bayfordbury glasshouses are erected 1948-1950 and cover nearly an acre with glass. Two innovations, new to Britain, are included in them: forced ventilation with humidification, and automatic ventilators.

The end of six years of blackout restrictions means that Lawrence is also free to experiment on artificial illumination (something he had tried unsuccessfully in 1936); he begins with a purchase of seven fluorescent lamps in December 1946, the first purchase he has ever made for pure experimental work. These lamps increase the yield of the early crop of tomatoes by 55 per cent. Between 1947 and 1953 tests on fluorescent, mercury, neon and sodium light sources proceed. The practical results are published in 1952 and the full scientific results in 1954.

See also:

W. J. C. Lawrence, Catch the tide: adventures in horticultural research, London: Grower Books, 1980.

W. J. C. Lawrence, Science and the Glasshouse, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd. 1948, 1950.

W. J. C. Lawrence and A. Calvert, Artificial illumination of seedlings, J. I. Leaflet No. 11, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1952.

W. J. C. Lawrence and A. Calvert, ‘The artificial illumination of seedlings’, Journal of Horticultural Science, 29 (July 1954): 157-74.

The Ministry of Agriculture’s small grant-in-aid of the Pomology Department, first awarded in 1935, is greatly increased in 1942. However, spiralling costs after the war make it necessary for the JIHI to seek further assistance from the Ministry. The John Innes Trustees successfully apply for a permanent maintenance grant (initially £16,000 p.a.) in September 1946, which becomes effective from 1 October 1946. To conform to Ministry practise, the Institution’s financial year is changed to begin on 1 October instead of 13 January (a date deriving from the inauguration of the Charity Commission Scheme in 1909). The Ministry also agrees to meet the capital cost of converting the buildings at Bayfordbury and of building a glasshouse unit for the use of the Institution.

This was a serious step; the JIHI had been one of very few research institutions in Britain which had been able to carry on without Government assistance and it had valued its independence. However, the needs of the Institution had outgrown the resources of the John Innes Charity. Three factors were important in bringing about this change: first, the general rise in scientific salaries; second, the expansion of other research stations, and third, the planned development of a national training service in agriculture after the war. The first two changes made it impossible to continue research on a satisfactory scale without Government help. The third made it unlikely that the previous system of training student gardeners at JIHI could ever be restored.

In December 1946 Darlington sends a scathing article on ‘The retreat of Science in Soviet Russia’ to the editor of the popular journal Fortnightly Review. Darlington has long maintained strong views about the suppression of genetics in Russia and believes that the JIHI is one of the few places ‘perhaps the only place’ where the full enormity of the statements being put forward by the Soviet school can be grasped. He has held back to protect his scientist friends there; now all but one are dead.

Darlington fails to get the article published in Fortnightly Review or Nature but is able to place it in Discovery, a scientific magazine. Darlington’s condemnation of ‘the official overthrow of truth and reason’ in Russia earns him the support of author George Orwell but not all Western scientists are convinced that attacking the Soviet regime is the right strategy. Over the next year the situation in Soviet genetics worsens; in August 1948 Mendelian genetics is officially denounced, institutions are closed, and geneticists are made to recant. Lysenkoist (Lamarckian) science becomes official Soviet biology. The political dimensions of these rival theories of inheritance also preclude serious debate over cytoplasmic inheritance in the West. 

See also:

C. D. Darlington, ‘The war against science in the Soviet Union’, Picture Post, 25 September 1948, pp. 22-23.

O. S. Harman, The man who invented the chromosome: a life of Cyril Darlington, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004, Ch. 8-9.

The Lysenko affair

Darlington’s BBC broadcast on the Lysenko affair with R. A. Fisher, S. C. Harland and J. B. S. Haldane on 30 November 1948 was reported in The Listener, 9 December 1948, pp. 873-876.

C D Darlington co-founds Heredity: An International Journal of Genetics with the biological statistician Ronald Fisher. They address this new journal to botanists and zoologists with interests in evolution and systematics; to physiologists (cytology and experimental technique); to medical researchers (diagnosis and treatment); to social scientists studying nature and nurture; to agriculturalists engaged in plant and animal breeding and finally to physicists and chemists seeking to bridge the gap between their sciences and biology. Underlying this broad appeal is the belief that genetics is a key causal framework for biology, social sciences and medicine.  Darlington and Fisher are self-consciously striking out the narrow limits of Bateson’s Journal of Genetics.  Privately Darlington is also motivated by difficulties getting his own work published in peer-reviewed journals (paralleling Bateson’s early experiences). Some of his submissions have been rejected as too cytological for Journal of Genetics, not experimental enough for Journal of Experimental Biology or have been excluded from the Proceedings of the Royal Society by hostile reviews from his rivals John Farmer and Reginald Ruggles Gates. Additionally Darlington wants to be able to publish his judgements on a range of issues uncensored. Fisher is deeply interested in the project, especially explorations of genetics and man, but it is Darlington who effectively acts as editor of the new journal.

See also:

Dan Lewis, ‘Cyril Dean Darlington 1903-1981’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Sociey, 29 (1983): 113-157, on p. 145.

O. S. Harman, The man who invented the chromosome: a life of Cyril Darlington, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004, pp. 207-10.

The Student Gardener scheme has been in suspension since the outbreak of war due to the lack of available students. In April 1946 JIHI takes on twelve new students under the Ministry of Agriculture’s scheme for training former service men and women in horticulture. In April of 1947, however, the Institution is compelled to give up its part in the scheme owing to the heavy demands on the still depleted staff from the planned removal to Bayfordbury. The Institution’s activities in the advanced training of gardeners, inaugurated in 1910, have come to an end.

The Governing Council express regret at this decision since the training scheme was the branch of work that most faithfully represented the original interests of the founder, John Innes. In future, special horticultural training will be provided by Universities, Agricultural Colleges, and Farm Institutes. The staff at JIHI feel that these facilities will not entirely remove the need that was met by the provisions of their Foundation and worry that they will not readily find such a source of expert craftsmanship as they have had in their Student Gardeners. The hope that JIHI might offer horticultural training again after the removal is complete is not realised. It is decided that it is not longer possible to continue the training programme for gardeners without detriment to the research work of the Institution.

In a climate of post-war austerity, the British government introduces measures designed to deliver stability and prosperity to farmers in a bid to increase the home-production of food. Government initiatives help to increase investment in new technologies (including new crop varieties) in agriculture and in the long-term farmers achieve marked increases in production.

See also:

John Martin, The Development of Modern Agriculture: British Farming since 1931, London: Macmillan, 2000.

Links:

http://www.nfu100.com/x176.xml?StartDate=08/06/1947

http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/postwarag.htm

Some 62,000 copies of the John Innes Leaflets series have been sold by the Institution since they were first published in 1940. In March 1948 a collected edition titled Fruit and the Soil is published by Oliver and Boyd. This booklet comprises revised and enlarged versions of the six leaflets already issued and a new leaflet by Angus Bateman on growing pure seed, based on his experiments. This edition of 4000 copies is sold out in June and a revised edition The Fruit, the Seed and the Soil (1949) is prepared. This includes three new leaflets: Raising Plants in Soil Blocks, Making New Plants (the Colchicine Method) and Sweet Corn in England.

In 1945 the Agricultural Improvement Council forms a scheme to establish national collections of shrubs, roses, and bulbs. The aim is to make the collections as complete as possible at each centre so that they will be ‘unique and of international interest’. Collections are formed at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Dianthus); Cambridge University Botanic Garden (Tulipa; Narcissus); the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley (Dahlia and Chrysanthemum); and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (Narcissus). The John Innes Horticultural Institution is selected as the centre for roses with the brief to co-ordinate research on practical problems of interest to rose breeders and growers.

The nucleus of a ‘National Rose Species Collection’ is assembled at the John Innes Horticultural Institution in Merton, Surrey, shortly before the move to Bayfordbury in Hertfordshire in 1949. To look after the collection the JIHI receives £300 a year for a whole-time foreman-gardener and £50 a year for ‘incidental expenses’. This is the largest grant awarded under the scheme. From 1948-1961 the Institution employs Gordon D. Rowley as ‘Keeper of the Rose Collection’. About five acres of the heavier land adjoining the mansion at Bayfordbury is set aside for the collection which begins with the wild species already existing in botanic gardens. One of Rowley’s first tasks is to rename the plants in public collections that were disorganized by war.

C. D. Darlington sees the rose collection as an opportunity for a long-term model experiment in the classification of a genus. Chromosome studies are an indispensable tool in the new systematics, which includes the study of geographical distribution, comparative morphology and breeding relationships. For growers the JIHI promises new methods of raising new stocks and new varieties, of improving germination, and producing polyploids. Over the next ten years JI will use chromosome studies to assist breeders in planning crosses, test techniques to speed germination and make field trials of different rootstocks.

Angus Bateman, a member of the Genetics Department at John Innes since 1942, publishes his observations on the mating behaviour of fruit flies in Heredity. Bateman has been combining groups of Drosophila melanogaster in vials, each fruit fly carrying a different dominant genetic marker. He is able to measure the reproductive success of each individual by counting the number of times the marker appears in the next generation. These experiments lead him to formulate what later becomes known as ‘Bateman’s principle’ or the theory that females almost always invest more energy into producing offspring than males, so that in most species females are a limiting resource over which the other sex will compete. He also concludes that promiscuity is more advantageous to the male than the female; hence males have evolved an ‘undiscriminating eagerness’ to mate and females a ‘discriminating passivity’- a fundamental sex difference that Bateman suggests applies even to humans.

‘Bateman’s principle’ became one of the grounding paradigms of behavioural biology, though later research has demonstrated many exceptions and counter-examples.

See also:

• A. J. Bateman, ‘Intra-sexual selection in Drosophila’, Heredity, 2 (1948): 349-368.
• Donald A. Dewsbury on the ‘Darwin-Bateman paradigm in historical context’
• Jonathan Knight on Bateman and sexual stereotypes

In October 1948 Kenneth Mather leaves the John Innes Horticultural Institution to take up the newly established chair of genetics at the University of Birmingham. In 1949 he is also appointed Director of the Agricultural Research Council’s new Unit of Biometrical Genetics at Birmingham marking the start of his leadership of an influential ‘Birmingham School’ of biometrical genetics. The Birmingham school is one of two institutions dominating statistical genetics in post-war Britain; an Edinburgh school of ‘quantitative genetics’ being the other major research group.

C. D. Darlington comments: ‘It was clear that Dr Mather was marked out to found a new school of genetics and, while his loss is a severe blow, there is no doubt of the service he will be able to render us in his new post. A lack of recruits trained in genetics has long been a problem for the Institution’. In recognition of the work he completed during his time at the John Innes Mather was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1949. Dan Lewis succeeds Mather as head of the Genetics Department at JIHI.

See also:

Dan Lewis, ‘Kenneth Mather 1911-1990’, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 38 (1992): 249-266.

A. W. F. Edwards, ‘R. A. Fisher- twice Professor of Genetics: London and Cambridge, or “A fairly well-known geneticist”’, Genetics Society News, 55 (July 2006): 33-39, on pp. 35-38.

The removal of the Institution takes place between 22 August and 18 October 1949. The operation consists of three stages, all undertaken by contractors. In Stage One, the personal possessions of staff are moved (several staff live on site both at Merton and Bayfordbury). In Stage Two, the movable buildings and the contents of the workshops, offices, laboratories and library are transferred. Finally, the trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and seeds in the care of the Garden Department are moved.

During November and December the gardens at Merton are gradually cleared so that at the end of the year nothing remains except the glasshouses which are to be sold by auction in January 1950.

The whole estate at Merton is transferred to Surrey County Council. At Bayfordbury, noise, dirt and displacement are suffered by JIHI staff well into 1950.

The reconstituted John Innes Club opens at Bayfordbury on 22 October 1949. The club (which in pre-war days catered mainly for the student gardeners and younger members of the laboratory staff) has been in suspension since the beginning of 1940 because most of its members joined the forces. The Committee forms three sections to cater for the social, sporting and cultural activities of the Club. The first section arranges a dance in November and Christmas, New Year and children’s parties. The second section arranges table tennis and billiards in the Mansion and a squash court for use in winter. Two hard tennis courts are being prepared for the summer. The third section arranges musical evenings and produces several plays. A fourth horticultural section is added in 1950. This section is open to any member of staff whether members of the Club or not. Its objects are purely educational and the organizers arrange lectures, film shows, brains trusts on gardening matters and visits to places of gardening interest. Bayfordbury is removed from the amenities of a town, so the Club assumes more importance than in the past in catering for the social welfare of the staff.

Comparatively little was published in genetics during Word War II. After the war the first major textbook of genetics to be published was Cyril Darlington and Kenneth Mather’s The Elements of Genetics (London: MacMillan). This widely-used textbook was influential enough to be reprinted, with a new introduction by Darlington, in 1969. It is salutary to look with hindsight at some of the descriptions of key genetical events in the original 1949 publication, notably the idea that the nucleic acid ‘coat’ was ‘thrown off’ the chromosomes at a particular stage in cell division. Evidently the cytogeneticists at John Innes had not been impressed by the results of the Avery group on the ‘transforming principle’ (DNA).