Leona Lynch

As Archive Assistant Leona is responsible for the preservation and cataloguing of newly deposited archive collections.

Leona works with the Outreach Curator to support the John Innes Historical Collections which cover the history of plant and microbial science.

She is currently cataloguing the archive of the British Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) founded as the Embryologist’s Club in 1948. Meetings were held three to six times a year with an illustrated lecture by established and developing scientists in a variety of fields, usually at University College London, then housing the only department of embryology and anatomy in the country.

Leona is also cataloguing the working notes and photographs of David Bond. He worked in the Forage Crops Department at the Cambridge Plant Breeding Institute (PBI), mainly breeding field beans (Vicia faba), until he retired in 1992. He demonstrated the importance of hybrid vigour in V. faba and discovered a cytoplasmic male-sterile in winter beans together with fertility restoring genes. Together with Mervyn Pope and the PBI team, he bred a series of composite varieties of winter beans which partially exploited heterosis and were the main varieties of winter beans recommended by N.I.A.B. until after 2000.