Category Archives: Musings from the past

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Have PhD, will travel . . . for half a century

Friday 12 December 1975. Fifty years ago today!

Harold Wilson had almost reached the end of his second term as Prime Minister. Queen were No. 1 in the UK chart with Bohemian Rhapsody, and would remain there for several weeks.

And, at The University of Birmingham, as the clock on Old Joe (actually the Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Clock Tower) struck 12 noon, so the Chancellor’s Procession made its way (to a musical accompaniment played by the University Organist) from the rear of the Great Hall to the stage.

Thus began a degree congregation (aka commencement in US parlance) to confer graduate and undergraduate degrees in the physical sciences (excluding physics and chemistry), biological and medical sciences, and in medicine and dentistry. All the graduands and their guests remained seated.

And I was among those graduands, about to have my PhD conferred by the Chancellor and renowned naturalist Sir Peter Scott (right).

Here are some photos taken during the ceremony as I received my degree, in the procession leaving the Great Hall, and with my parents afterwards.

I’d completed my thesis on the biosystematics of South American potatoes, The Evolutionary Significance of the Triploid Cultivated Potato, Solanum x chaucha Juz. et Buk., at the end of September, just meeting the deadline to have the degree conferred (subject to a successful examination) at the December congregation.

Native potato varieties from the Andes of South America.

My thesis defence (an oral examination or viva voce to give its complete title) was held around the third week of October if my memory serves me right. Fortunately I didn’t have to make any significant corrections to the text, and the examiners’ reports were duly submitted and the degree confirmed by the university [1].

Among the university staff who attended the degree congregation were Professor JG ‘Jack’ Hawkes, Mason Professor of Botany and head of the Department of Botany (later Plant Biology) in the School of Biological Sciences, and Dr J Trevor Williams, Course Tutor for the MSc degree course Conservation and Utilisation of Plant Genetic Resources in the same department.

Jack was a world-renowned expert on the taxonomy of potatoes and a pioneer in the field of genetic resources conservation, who founded the MSc course in 1969. He supervised my PhD research. Trevor had supervised my MSc dissertation on lentils, Studies in the Genus Lens Miller with Special Reference to Lens culinaris Medik., in 1971 when I first came to Birmingham to join the plant genetic resources course.

Here I am with Jack (on my right) and Trevor just after the congregation. Click on the image to view an abridged version of the congregation program.

At the same congregation several other graduates from the Department of Botany received their MSc degrees in genetic resources or PhD.

L-R: Pamela Haigh, Brenig Garrett, me, Trevor Williams, Jack Hawkes, Jean Hanson, Margaret Yarwood, Jane Toll, and Stephen Smith

When I began my MSc studies in genetic resources conservation and use at Birmingham in September 1970 I had no clear idea how to forge a career in this fascinating field. The other four students in my cohort came from positions in their own countries, to which they would return after graduating.

My future was much less certain, until one day in February 1971 when Jack Hawkes returned to Birmingham from an expedition to collect wild potatoes in Bolivia. He told me about a one-year vacancy from September that same year at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru, and asked if I’d be interested. Not half! And as the saying goes, The rest is history.

Jack’s expedition had been supported, in part, by CIP’s Director General, Dr Richard Sawyer, who told Jack that he wanted to send a young Peruvian scientist, Zósimo Huaman, to attend the MSc course at Birmingham from September 1971. He was looking for someone to fill that vacancy and did he know of anyone who fitted the bill. Knowing of my interest of working in South America if the opportunity arose, Jack told Sawyer about me. I met him some months later in Birmingham.

Well, things didn’t proceed smoothly, even though Zósimo came to Birmingham as scheduled. Because of funding delays at the UK’s Overseas Development Administration, ODA (which became the Department for International Development or DfID before it was absorbed into the Foreign Office), I wasn’t able to join CIP until January 1973.

In the interim, Jack persuaded ODA to support me at Birmingham until I could move to CIP, and he registered me for a PhD program. He just told me: I think we should work on the triploids. And I was left to my own devices to figure out just what that might mean, searching the literature, growing some plants at Birmingham to get a feel for potatoes, even making a stab (rather unsuccessfully) at learning Spanish.

Despite his relaxed view about what my PhD research might encompass, Jack was incredibly supportive, and we spent time in the field together on both occasions he visited CIP while I was there.

With Jack Hawkes in the CIP potato germplasm collection field, in Huancayo, central Peru (alt. 3100 masl) in January 1974.

I was also extremely fortunate that I had, as my local supervisor at CIP, the head of the Department of Breeding & Genetics, Dr P Roger Rowe, originally a maize geneticist, who joined CIP in mid-1973 from the USDA potato collection in Wisconsin where he was the curator. Roger and I have remained friends ever since, and Steph and I met him and his wife Norma in 2023 during our annual visit to the USA (where our elder daughter lives).

Roger and Norma Rowe, Steph and me beside the mighty Mississippi in La Crosse, Wisconsin in June 2023.

On joining CIP, Roger thoroughly evaluated—and approved—my research plans, while I also had some general responsibilities to collect potatoes in Peru, which I have written about in these two posts.

My research involved frequent trips between December and May each year to the CIP field station in Huancayo, to complete a crossing program between potato varieties with different chromosome numbers and evaluating their progeny. In CIP headquarters labs in Lima, I set about describing and classifying different potato varieties, and comparing them using a number of morphological and biochemical criteria. And I made field studies to understand how farmers grow their mixed fields of potato varieties in different regions of Peru.

With eminent Peruvian potato taxonomist, Carlos Ochoa
Solanum x chaucha varoeties, and pollinating potatoes in Huancayo.
Collecting potatoes in the south of Peru.
Off to farmers’ fields.
Collecting potatoes in Cajamarca, northern Peru in May 1974.
Collecting potato flower buds for chromosome counts, from a farmer’s field near Cuzco, in February 1974.
Sampling potato flower buds for chromosome studies, near Cuzco, 1974
Harvest time in Cajamarca.
Hydroponic potatoes on Lake Titicaca..

At the beginning of April 1975, Steph and I returned to Birmingham so that I could write my thesis. But we didn’t fly directly home. Richard Sawyer had promised me a postdoctoral position with CIP—subject to successful completion of my PhD—with a posting in the Outreach Program (then to become the Regional Research and Training Program) based in Central America. So we spent time visiting Costa Rica and Mexico before heading for New York and a flight back to Manchester. And all the while keeping a very close eye on my briefcase that contained all my raw research data. Had that gone astray I’m not sure what I would have done. No such thing in 1975 as personal computers, cloud storage and the like. So, you can imagine my relief when we eventually settled into life again in Birmingham, and I could get on with the task in hand: writing my thesis and submitting it before the 1 October deadline.

I still had some small activities to complete, and I didn’t start drafting my thesis in earnest until July. It took me just six weeks to write, and then I spent time during September preparing all the figures. Jack’s technician, Dave Langley, typed my thesis on a manual typewriter!

Of course each chapter had to be approved by Jack. And he insisted that I handed over each chapter complete, with the promise that he’d read it that same evening and return the draft to me with corrections and suggestions by the next day, or a couple of days at most. That was a supervision model I took on board when I became a university lecturer in 1981 and had graduate students of my own.

Looking back, my thesis was no great shakes. It was, I believe, a competent piece of research that met the university criteria for the award of a PhD: that it should comprise original research carried out under supervision, and of a publishable standard.

I did publish three papers from my thesis, which have been cited consistently in the scientific literature over the years by other researchers.

So, PhD under my belt so-to-speak, Steph and I returned to Lima just before New Year 1976. Later in April that year, we moved to Costa Rica where I did research on a serious bacterial disease of potatoes, seed potato production, and co-founded a pioneer regional cooperative program on potato research and development. We remained in Costa Rica for almost five years before returning to Lima, and from there to The University of Birmingham.

I taught at Birmingham for a decade before becoming Head of the Genetic Resources Center (with the world’s largest and most important rice genebank) at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, Philippines from July 1991. Then in May 2001, I gave up any direct involvement in research and joined IRRI’s senior management team as Director for Program Planning and Communications. I retired in 2010 and returned to the UK.

50 years later

Since retiring, I’ve co-edited—in 2013—a major text on climate change and genetic resources, and led an important review, in 2016-2017, of the management of a network of international genebanks.

Without a PhD none of this would have been possible. Indeed continued employment at CIP in 1976 was contingent upon successful completion of my PhD.

I was extremely fortunate that, as a graduate student (from MSc to PhD) I had excellent mentors: Trevor, Jack, and Roger. I learned much from them and throughout my career tried (successfully I hope) to emulate their approach with my colleagues, staff who reported to me, and students. I’ve also held to the idea that one is never too old to have mentors.

[1] I completed my PhD in four years (September 1971 to September 1975. Back in the day, PhD candidates were allowed eight years from first registration to carry out their research and submit their thesis for examination. Because of concern about submission rates among PhD students in the 1980s, The University of Birmingham (and other universities) reduced the time limit to five years then to four. So nowadays, a PhD program in the UK comprises three years of research plus one year to write and submit the thesis, to be counted as an on-time submission.

 

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Studying at Southampton, 1967-1970 (updated 20 October 2025)

In October 1967 (when I started my undergraduate studies in [Environmental] Botany and Geography¹), The University of Southampton was a very different institution from what it is today. So many changes over the past 50 years! One of the biggest changes is its size. In 1967 there were around 4500-5000 undergraduates (maybe 5000 undergraduates and postgraduates combined) if my memory serves me well, just on a single campus at Highfield.

Today, Southampton is a thriving university with a total enrolment (in 2015/16) of almost 25,000 (70% undergraduates) spread over seven campuses. Southampton has a healthy research profile, a respectable international standing, and is a founding member of the Russell Group of leading universities in the UK.

In 1967, the university was led by Vice-Chancellor Professor Sir Kenneth Mather² FRS (1965-1971), an eminent biometrical geneticist, who came to Southampton from the Department of Genetics at The University of Birmingham, where he had been head of department. The Chancellor (1964-1974) was Baron Murray of Newhaven.

(L) Professor Sir Kenneth Mather and (R) Lord Keith Murray (from Wikipedia)

The campus
Looking at a map of the Highfield campus today, many new buildings have risen since 1967, departments have moved between buildings, and some have relocated to new campuses.

In the 1960s, Southampton had benefited from a period of university expansion and new infrastructure under the then Conservative Government (how times have changed), with Sir Edward Boyle at the helm in the Department for Education or whatever it was named in those days.

Until about 1966 or early 1967, Botany had been housed in a small building immediately north of the Library, which has since disappeared. It was one of the early beneficiaries of the ‘Boyle building expansion’ at Southampton, moving to Building #44, shared with Geology.

After I left Southampton in the summer of 1970, Botany and Zoology merged (maybe also with physiology and biochemistry) to form a new department of Biological Sciences at the Boldrewood Campus along Burgess Road, a short distance west of the Highfield Campus. Biological Sciences relocated to a new Institute for Life Sciences (#85) on the main campus at Highfield a few years back.

Geology now resides within Ocean and Earth Science, National Oceanography Centre Southampton located at the Waterfront campus on Southampton Docks.

The Geography department had been located on the first floor of the Hartley Building (#36, now entirely devoted to the university library). By autumn 1968, Geography moved to a new home in the Arts II Building (#2). For some years now it has occupied the Shackleton Building (#44), the former Botany and Geology home.

Spending more time in Botany
As Combined Honours students, the four of us had feet in two departments, and tutors in each. We took the full Single Honours botany course for the first two years, but in the final year, specialised in plant ecology, with a few optional courses (such as plant speciation, plant breeding, and population genetics in my case) taken from the botany common course that all Single Honours students took. I also sat in our the plant taxonomy lectures given by Reading professor and head of the department of botany there, Vernon Heywood, who traveled to Southampton twice a week for five or six weeks. In the early 1990s I crossed paths with him in Rome where we were attending a conference at FAO, and enjoyed an excellent meal together and an evening of reminiscing.

Students complain today that they have few formal contact hours during their degree courses. Not so at Southampton in the late 1960s. But that was also a consequence of taking two subjects with a heavy practical class load, and an ancillary, Geology, for one year, also with a practical class component.

During the first term, Fridays were devoted to practical classes from 9-5 with a break for lunch. In the mornings we spent 10 weeks learning about (or honing existing knowledge) plant anatomy, taught by cytologist Senior Lecturer Dr Roy Lane. Afternoons were devoted to plant morphology, taught by Reader and plant ecologist Dr Joyce Lambert. In the Spring Term in 1968, we started a series of practical classes looking at the flowering plants. Ferns and mosses were studied in the second year.

In the second year, we focused on genetics, plant biochemistry, plant physiology, and mycology, taught by Drs. Joe Smartt, Alan Myers, David Morris, and John Manners. On reflection, the genetics course was pretty basic; most of us had not studied any genetics at school. So practical classes focused on Drosophila fruit fly crossing experiments, and analysing the progeny. Today, students are deeply involved with molecular biology and genomics; they probably learn all about Mendelian genetics at school. During the second year, plant taxonomist Leslie Watson departed for Australia, and this was the reason why Vernon Heywood was asked to cover this discipline later on.

The structure of the Single Honours Botany course changed by my final year. There was a common course covering a wide range of topics, with specialisms taken around the various topics. For us Combined Honours students, we took the plant ecology specialism, and three components from the common course. We also had to complete a dissertation, the work for which was undertaken during the long vacation between the second and third years, and submitted, without fail, on the first day of the Spring Term in January. We could choose a topic in either Botany or Geography. I made a study of moorland vegetation near my home in North Staffordshire, using different sampling methods depending on the height of vegetation.

We made two field courses. The first, in July 1968, focusing on an appreciation of the plant kingdom, took us to the Burren on the west coast of Ireland in Co. Clare. We had a great time.

The last morning, Saturday 27 July 1968, outside the Savoy Hotel in Lisdoonvarna. In the right photo, L-R, back row: Alan Myers, Leslie Watson (staff), Jenny?, Chris ? (on shoulders), Paul Freestone, Gloria Davies, John Grainger, Peter Winfield. Middle row: Janet Beazley and Nick Lawrence (crouching) Alan Mackie, Margaret Barran, Diana Caryl, John Jackson, Stuart Christophers. Sitting: Jill Andison, Patricia Banner, Mary Goddard, Jane Elliman, Chris Kirby (crouching)

Checking out the Cliffs of Moher, and working on individual projects (Paul Freestone, John Grainger, Jane Elliman)

We all had to carry out a short project, in pairs, and I worked with Chris Kirby on the brown algae abundant on the coast near Lisdoonvarna which was our base. At the end of the second year, we spent two weeks in Norfolk, when the Americans first landed on the Moon. Led by Joyce Lambert and John Manners, the course had a strong ecology focus, taking us around the Norfolk Broads, the salt marshes, the Breckland, and fens. We also had small individual projects to carry out. I think mine looked at the distribution of a particular grass species across Wheatfen, home of Norfolk naturalist (and good friend of Joyce Lambert), Ted Ellis.

Professor Stephen H Crowdy was the head of department. He had come to Southampton around 1966 from the ICI Laboratores at Jealott’s Hill. He was an expert on the uptake and translocation of various pesticides and antibiotics in plants. I never heard him lecture, and hardly ever came into contact with him. He was somewhat of a non-entity as far as us students were concerned.

Joyce Lambert in 1964

Joyce Lambert was my tutor in botany, a short and somewhat rotund person, a chain-smoker, known affectionately by everyone as ‘Bloss’ (short for Blossom). Her reputation as a plant ecologist was founded on pioneer research, a stratigraphical analysis of the Norfolk Broads confirming their man-made origin, the result of medieval peat diggings. Later on, with her colleague and head of department until 1965, Professor Bill Williams, Joyce developed multivariate methods to study plant communities. This latter research area was the focus of much of her final year teaching in plant ecology. Joyce passed away in 2005.

Joe Smartt

I became a close friend of Joe Smartt, who retired in 1996 as Reader in Biology, and a highly respected expert on grain legumes. It was Joe who encouraged my interest in the nexus between genetics and ecology, which eventually led to me applying to Birmingham in February 1970 to join the MSc course on Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources – in September that year, the beginnings of my career in genetic resources conservation. Outside academics, Joe and I founded a Morris dancing team at Southampton, The Red Stags, in October 1968, and its ‘descendant’ is still thriving today. Joe passed away in June 2013.

A young Alan Myers in 1964

I also had little contact outside lectures and practical classes with the other staff, such as physiologists Alan Myers and David Morris, or cytologist Roy Lane. In the late 1980s, when I was a lecturer in plant biology at The University of Birmingham, as internal examiner I joined plant pathologist John Manners (the external examiner) to examine a plant pathology PhD dissertation at Birmingham. I hadn’t seen him since I left Southampton in 1970.

Every October he used to organize a fungus foray into the New Forest for a day. I’ve read a couple of accounts from former botany students, before my time, and how enjoyable these outings were. John was elected President of the British Mycological Society in 1968, and was a recipient of the very special President’s Medal of the Society.

October 1969 – John Manners leading a fungus foray, near Denny Wood in the New Forest

Les Watson in 1964

Leslie Watson (who came from my home town of Leek in Staffordshire) taught flowering plant taxonomy, and had an interest in the application of numerical techniques to classify plants. At some point in my second year, he joined the Australian National University in Canberra, completing several important studies on the grass genera of the world. After I had posted something a few years back on my blog, Leslie left a comment. I’ve subsequently found that he retired to Western Australia. I’ve recently been in touch with him again, and he gave me some interesting insights regarding the setting up of the combined degree course in botany and geography.

In October 1968 (the beginning of my second year), John Rodwell joined Joyce Lambert’s research group to start a PhD study of limestone vegetation. He had graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Leeds that summer. In the summer of 1969, John stayed with me in Leek for a few days while making some preliminary forays (with me acting as chauffeur) to the Derbyshire Dales. After completing his PhD, John was ordained an Anglican priest, and was based at the University of Lancaster and becoming the co-ordinator of research leading to the development of the British National Vegetation Classification. He joined the faculty at Lancaster in 1991, and became Professor of Ecology in 1997, retiring in 2004.

Until 1970 there were no re-sit exams at Southampton – unlike the general situation today nationwide in our universities. You either passed your exams first time or were required to withdraw. We lost about half the botany class in 1968, including one of the five Combined Botany and Geography students. Students could even be asked to withdraw at the end of their second year. However, after much uproar among the student body in 1969, the university did eventually permit re-sit exams.

James H Bird, Professor of Geography and head of department, 1967-1989

Geography in the late sixties
The Head of Geography was Professor James Bird, an expert on transport geography (focusing on ports) who joined the department in 1967, replacing renowned physical geographer, FJ Monkhouse. I can’t recall having seen, let alone met him more than a handful of occasions during my three years at Southampton. But from his obituary that I came across recently, he was remembered with affection apparently. He passed away in 1997.

In the Geography department I had contact with just a few staff who taught aspects of physical geography. Dr Ronald John Small lectured on the geomorphology of the Wessex region, and various tropical erosion processes. He was an excellent lecturer. After I left Southampton he authored a student text on geomorphology, published in 1970, with a second edition in 1978. He became first Reader in Geography, then Professor, and head of department (1983-1989). He retired in 1989.

His younger colleague, Michael Clark (later Professor of Geography) also taught several courses in physical geography, focusing on river erosion and weathering processes. He was only 27 in 1967, and had completed his PhD in the department just a couple of years earlier. His work evolved to focus on environmental management, water resources, coastal zone management and cold regions research and on the interactions between society and risk. His involvement in multi-disciplinary applied research and the application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to decision-making led to the co-founding of the GeoData Institute in 1984, where he served as Director for 18 years (1988-2010). A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he received the Gill Memorial Award in 1983. He passed away in 2014.

The third year geomorphology class had eight students: four from Combined honours, and four single Geography honours. Among those was Geoff Hewlett/Hewitt (?), a rather intense, mature student, who was awarded one of just two Firsts in Geography. Just a week before Finals in May/June 1970, John Small took our group of eight students for a short field trip (maybe four days) to Dartmoor in Devon, to look at tropical weathered granite landscapes (the tors) there. It was also an opportunity, they divulged, to get us all away from intense revision, and to relax while learning something at the same time.

John Small and Geoff (R)

My Geography tutor during my first year was Dr Roger Barry, a climatologist who left Southampton in 1968 for a new position at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He passed away in 2018.

Dr Brian P Birch became my tutor in my second and third years (he had interviewed me for a place at Southampton in early 1967 with Joyce Lambert from Botany). Brian taught a course on soils and their classification. But I have subsequently discovered that his interest was in settlement patterns (particularly in the US Midwest, where he had completed his Master’s degree in Indiana; he has undergraduate and PhD degrees from Durham University) and their impact on the environment. I never attended any lectures in this field from him. After contacting Prof Jane Hart at Southampton earlier in the year, she gave me Brian’s address so I wrote to him. In a lengthy reply, he told me about the evolution of the Combined Honours degree course into a fully-fledged Environmental Sciences degree, for which he was the Geography lead person. The course grew to include Geology, Oceanography, and even Chemistry. Brian took early retirement in 1990. It was lovely hearing from him after so many decades; he is now in his 80s. He recalled that on one occasion, I had turned up in the Geography department coffee room, and met with staff. He still knew all about my connections with Peru and potatoes. I wonder if that was in 1975 while I was back in the UK to complete my PhD, or later on in the 80s when I did attend a meeting in Botany/ Biological Sciences on a plant genus, Lathyrus, I was working on.

In my final year, there was a new member of staff, Keith Barber who taught Quaternary studies, and who was still completing his PhD at Lancaster University. Keith later became Professor of Environmental Change, and retired in 2009; he passed away in February 2017.

At the end of the first week of classes in October 1967, all geography students had a Saturday excursion to the northwest outskirts of Southampton (I don’t remember the exact route we took), and having been dropped off, we all walked back into the city, with various stops for the likes of Small and Clark, and another lecturer named Robinson, to wax lyrical about the landscape and its evolution and history. This was an introduction to a term long common course about the geography of the Southampton region, examined just before Christmas.

There was only one field course in Geography that I attended, just before Easter in March 1968, to Swansea (where we stayed at the university), and traveled around the region. It was fascinating seeing the effects of industrialization and mining, and pollution over centuries, in the Swansea Valley, and attempts at vegetation regeneration, as well as the physical geography of the Gower Peninsula. The weather was, like the curate’s egg, good in parts. On some days it was hot enough to wear swimsuits on the beach; other days it rained. On the morning of our departure home, there were several inches of snow!

Student life
I had a place in South Stoneham House (now demolished), an all male hall of residence about 25 minutes walk southeast from the Highfield campus. In the sixties, most of the halls of residence were single sex (some of the time – remember these were the Swinging Sixties). Across the road from Stoneham was Montefiore House, a self-catering hall mainly for mature students, and just down Wessex Lane was Connaught, another all male hall. Highfield (to the west of the campus) and Chamberlain (to the north) were all female halls; Glen Eyre (close to Chamberlain) was, if I remember, both male and female, and self catering.

Rules about occupancy were supposedly strictly enforced. Being caught was cause for expulsion from hall. However, the number of males in female halls and vice versa overnight on Fridays and Saturdays was probably quite significant.

I enjoyed my two years in Stoneham, being elected Vice-President of the Junior Common Room (JRC) in my second year. Law student Geoff Pickerill was the President of the JCR. One of my roles was to organize the annual social events: a fireworks party and dance in November, and the May Ball.

Several of my closest friends came from my Stoneham days, and Neil Freeman (Law) and I have remained in touch all these years. Neil and I moved into ‘digs’ together (with an English and History student, Trevor Boag, from York) in a house at 30 University Road, less than 100 m south of the university administration building that opened in 1969. Our landlord and landlady were Mr and Mrs Drissell who looked after the three of us as though we were family.

Neil had an old Ford Popular

The university had a very active Students’ Union in the late sixties. A new complex of cafeterias, ballrooms, meeting rooms, and sports facilities had just been completed in 1967. My main interest was folk music and dancing. I joined the Folk Club that met every Sunday evening, and even got up to sing on several occasions. I joined the English and Scottish Folk Dance Society³, and as I mentioned earlier, co-founded The Red Stags Morris in Autumn 1968. Through these dancing activities, I attended three Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festivals in Hull (1968), Strathclyde (1969), and Reading (1970), performing a demonstration dance at each: Scottish at Hull and Strathclyde, and Morris (Beaux of London City) at Reading.

I also was involved in the University Rag Week as part of the Stoneham contributions.

In my final year, I bumped into a couple of young women in the foyer of the university library. They were from a local teaching college, and were taking part in the city-wide Rag activities. They asked me to buy a raffle ticket – which I did. Then, I suddenly asked one of the girls, who had very long hair, if her name was Jackson. You can imagine her surprise when she confirmed it was. ‘Then’, I said, ‘you are my cousin Caroline’ (the daughter of my father’s younger brother Edgar). I hadn’t seen Caroline for more than a decade, but when I was speaking with her I just knew we were related!

Three years passed so quickly. I graduated on 10 July 1970.

Later in September I began graduate studies at The University of Birmingham, and a career in international agricultural research for development. But that’s another story.

I spent some of my happiest years at Southampton, enjoyed the academics and the social life. I grew up, and was able to face the world with confidence. Southampton: an excellent choice.

These are some of my memories. Thinking back over 50 years I may have got some details wrong, but I think the narrative is mostly correct. If anyone reading this would like to update any details, or add information, please do get in touch. Just leave a comment.

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¹ In 1967 I applied to study Botany and Geography. During the Autumn Term of my final year, in 1969, the university changed the degree title to Environmental Botany and Geography that perhaps better reflected the course structure of (mainly) ecology on the one hand and physical geography (geomorphology, climatology, biogeography) on the other. This was probably one of the first environmental degrees.

² After he retired, Mather returned to his home in Birmingham, and became an Honorary Professor in the Department of Genetics in the School of Biological Sciences. In 1981 I joined the staff of the Department of Plant Biology (where I’d taken my PhD) in the same School. By about 1988, the four departments of the School (Plant Biology, Zoology & Comparative Physiology, Microbiology, and Genetics) had merged to form a unitary School of Biological Sciences, and I became a member of the Plant Genetics Research Group. I also moved my office and laboratory to the south ground floor of the School building, that was previously the home of Genetics. Prof. Mather had an office just down the corridor from mine, and we would meet for afternoon tea, and often chat about Southampton days. At Southampton he taught a population genetics course to a combined group of Botany and Zoology students. It was an optional course for me that I enjoyed. One day, he was lecturing about the Hardy-Weinburg Equilibrium, or some such, and filling the blackboard with algebra. Turning around to emphasise one point, he saw a young woman (from Zoology) seated immediately in front of me. She was about to light a cigarette! Without batting an eyelid, and not missing an algebraic beat, all he said was ‘We don’t smoke in lectures’, and turned back to complete the formula he was deriving. Needless to say the red-faced young lady put her cigarette away.

The late 60s were a period of student turmoil, and Southampton was not immune. Along University Road (which bisects the Highfield Campus), close to the Library, a new Administration building, with the Vice-Chancellor’s office (#37) was completed in late 1969 or early 1970 and, as rumored ahead of the event, was immediately the focus of a student sit-in, and regrettably some significant damage. However, one of Mather’s enduring legacies, however, was the establishment of a Medical School at Southampton.

³ At the first meeting of the EDFDS that I attended (probably the first week proper of term), I met a young woman, Liz Holgreaves, who became my best friend during that first year at Southampton, and we dated for many months.

Almost two weeks ago, I received the sad news from Liz’s husband, John Harvey, that she had passed away on 30 August. She was 76.

Liz was studying English and History and I was studying Botany and Geography. Such disparate academic interests, yet we were brought together through our love of folk dancing.

When I met her for the first time, at the first meeting of the English and Scottish Folk Dance Society, I thought that I had never met a lovelier person. And, much to my delight (and perhaps even astonishment), she agreed to meet me later on in the week for a coffee.

As the weeks progressed, we went out together more and more, and by the middle of the Spring Term, our relationship had begun to blossom. During the summer vacation, I spent several weeks at her home in Church Fenton near York, and we went youth hostelling over the North York Moors, visiting Robin Hoods Bay where she had spent many happy childhood holidays.

Liz visited my family home in Leek in North Staffordshire and I was delighted to show her the beautiful Staffordshire Moorlands and the dales of Derbyshire where I grew up. She even joined my family at the wedding of my elder brother Ed and Christine in Brighton. On that evening Liz and I enjoyed a theatre show of The White Heather Club seeing many of the singers and dancers who regularly appeared on the BBC program of that same name, such as folk legends Robin Hall and Jimmy Macgregor.

Sadly, our relationship did not endure, although Liz and I remained good friends and always enjoyed dancing together. She was one of the most graceful dancers I have ever partnered.

I lost touch with Liz after I left Southampton. She and John were married in 1971. And I met Steph in 1972 at the University of Birmingham where we were graduate students.

However, moving on almost 30 years (I was working in the Philippines at the time) I came across the name of someone online who I thought might be related to Liz, and so I wrote to them. You can imagine my surprise when a long letter from Liz landed on my desk a couple of months later. Catching up on so many intervening years, we agreed to meet whenever I was next in the UK on home leave, sharing so many memories and finding out about each other’s families. She had three children: Jamie, Joseph, and Sarah. Steph and I have two daughters, Hannah and Philippa, who are much the same age as Liz’s.

Early in the 2000s, Liz wrote me that the pain she was suffering had been finally diagnosed as secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, and it was this condition (and others) that led to her going into care around 5 years ago. And despite her deteriorating health, she remained happy and always confident in the deep and enduring love of John and children.

Liz died peacefully with John holding her hand, while he and Joe read to her from one of her favourite books, as they listened to the second movement of Mozart’s 21st piano concerto, another of Liz’s favourites.

I was privileged to attend her funeral online on 14 October. It was moving ceremony, full of love and admiration for a beautiful and gentle woman. Many tears were shed.

And although I met Liz only once since we left Southampton in 1970, her passing has raised so many good memories of those times. And for that I will be forever grateful, and she continues to have a place in my heart.

My deep and sincere condolences to John, Jamie, Joe, and Sarah, and their families. Liz will be sorely missed.

 

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Dance as if no one is watching . . . (updated 17 October 2025)

October 1967. I remember it well. I’d landed up in Southampton about to begin a three year BSc course in botany and geography. I’d gained a place in one of the halls of residence, South Stoneham House, and life was hunky-dory.

I think we arrived in Southampton on the Wednesday evening. On the following Saturday, the Students’ Union had organised its annual ‘Bun Fight’, when all the student societies put all their wares on display and try and persuade as many freshmen to join as possible. Like many others, I went along to see what was on offer.

1475206_origI loitered a little longer in front of the booth of the English & Scottish Folk Dance Society, and before I had chance to ‘escape’ some of the folks there had engaged me in conversation and persuaded me to come along to their next evening.

While I had long had an interest in folk music, I’d never done any folk dancing whatsoever, although I had a passing interest. Whenever there was something on the TV about folk dance I always watched. But that was it.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I did go along the next week to my first folk dance club session – and I was hooked. And I also met a girl, Liz Holgreaves (seen in several of the photos below) who became my best friend during the first year at university [1].

It took some time to master much of the stepping for both English and Scottish country dances, but I found I was more or less ‘a natural’, with a good sense of rhythm. And for the next three years, I thoroughly enjoyed all the dancing I took part in. At the beginning of my second year in 1968 I helped found the Red Stags Morris Men, and that was my introduction to Morris dancing for more than a decade, and it really only lapsed while I was away in Latin America during the 1970s, and since 1991 when I moved to the Philippines.

I really like Scottish dancing. Mix with a great set of dancers, and dance to a band that can really make the floor bounce, and there’s nothing better.

During my Southampton days, we attended three Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festivals, at the University of Hull (in February 1968), Strathclyde University (a year later), and the University of Reading in 1970. At Hull and Strathclyde I was a member of the Scottish dance demonstration team, the first occasion only four months or so after I first began dancing.

Scottish dancing005

I don’t remember the names of two of the girls here at the Inter-Varsity Folk Dance Festival at the University of Hull in 1968. Standing, L to R: Edward Johns, me, John Chubb. Sitting, L to R: Elizabeth Holgreaves, ??, Pauline ??

The following year we were at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. Fortunately the Students’ Union subsidised our air fares to Glasgow from London Heathrow. We flew on a BEA Comet! We got through, but many of the university representatives from south of the Border were caught up in the bad weather when snow blocked many of the main routes from England to Scotland, and they eventually turned up almost 24 hours late. The evening ceilidh was wonderful.

L to R: me, ??, Clive James, ??. Elizabeth Holgreaves, Neil Freeman
Enjoying ourselves at the evening ceilidh.
I think this must be an eightsome reel, with Liz in the middle.
L to R: Me, Dr Joe Smartt (genetics lecturer in the Dept. of Botany), Clive James, Neil Freeman.

By the 1970 festival at Reading, I had already help found the Morris side, and that year I participated only in Morris dancing. After Southampton, I moved to Birmingham to begin graduate studies, and joined the Green Man’s Morris & Sword Club, eventually becoming Squire in 1982.

L to r: Russell Meredith, me, Steve Jordan, Joe Smartt
GMM&SC logo
Dancing ‘Sheriff’s Ride’ from the Lichfield tradition

By the end of the 1980s I’d given up dancing, having developed arthritis in my knees and hips. It was just too uncomfortable to carry on dancing even though my arthritis never became debilitating. I’d love to dance again, but given my current condition, it’s more than I can manage to make a two mile walk, never mind dance. Having both feet off the ground at the same time is something that my left leg and ankle would not tolerate.

[1] An update on 17 October 2025
A few days ago, I received the sad news (from Liz Holgreaves husband John Harvey) that Liz had passed away on 30 August. She was 76. This photo was taken in 2006 at her elder son’s wedding.

During our first year at the University of Southampton (1967-68), Liz and I were best friends, and we dated for several months. She was studying English and History and I was studying Botany and Geography. Such disparate academic interests, yet we were brought together through our love of folk dancing.

When I met her for the first time, at the first meeting of the English and Scottish Folk Dance Society, I thought that I had never met a lovelier person. And, much to my delight (and perhaps even astonishment), she agreed to meet me later on in the week for a coffee.

As the weeks progressed, we went out together more and more, and by the middle of the Spring Term, our relationship had begun to blossom. During the summer vacation, I spent several weeks at her home in Church Fenton near York, and we went youth hostelling over the North York Moors. This is an area my wife Steph and I have come to enjoy since we moved to the northeast in 2020. Liz visited my family home in Leek in North Staffordshire and I was delighted to show her the beautiful Staffordshire Moorlands and the dales of Derbyshire where I grew up. She even joined my family at the wedding of my elder brother Ed and Christine in Brighton. On that evening Liz and I enjoyed a theatre show of The White Heather Club seeing many of the singers and dancers who regularly appeared on the BBC program of that same name, such as folk legends Robin Hall and Jimmy Macgregor.

Sadly, our relationship did not endure, although Liz and I remained good friends and always enjoyed dancing together. She was one of the most graceful dancers I have ever partnered.
I lost touch with Liz after I left Southampton. She and John were married in 1971. And I met Steph in 1972 at the University of Birmingham where we were graduate students.

However, moving on almost 30 years (I was working in the Philippines at the time) I came across the name of someone online who I thought might be related to Liz, and so I wrote to them. You can imagine my surprise when a long letter from Liz landed on my desk a couple of months later. Catching up on so many intervening years, we agreed to meet whenever I was next in the UK on home leave, sharing so many memories and finding out about each other’s families. She had three children: Jamie, Joseph, and Sarah. Steph and I have two daughters, Hannah and Philippa, who are much the same age as Liz and John’s.

Early in the 2000s, Liz wrote me that the pain she was suffering had been finally diagnosed as secondary progressive multiple sclerosis, and it was this condition (and others) that led to her going into care around five years ago. And despite her deteriorating health, she remained happy and always confident in the deep and enduring love of John and her children.

Liz passed away peacefully with John holding her hand, while he and Joe read to her from one of her favourite books, as they listened to her favourite music, the second movement of Mozart’s 21st piano concerto.

I was privileged to attend her funeral online last Tuesday. It was a moving ceremony, full of love and admiration for a beautiful and gentle woman. Many tears were shed.

And although I met Liz only once since we left Southampton in 1970, her passing has raised so many good memories of those times. And for that I will be forever grateful, and she continues to have a place in my heart.

My deep and sincere condolences to John, Jamie, Joe, and Sarah, and their families. Liz will be sorely missed.

 

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It ended 160 years ago . . .

I’m not sure why or precisely when I developed an interest in the American Civil War. A devastating war (the bloodiest in American history¹), a continent away, with which we had no family connections that I’m aware of, although any on the Irish side of my family who emigrated to the United States in the 1840s and subsequently (as a consequence of the Irish Potato Famine) may well have become involved in the fighting. I just don’t know.

In my early teens, I saw an exhibition of photographs of the Civil War by celebrated American photographer Matthew Brady (right, taken in 1875). Perhaps he was the first photojournalist. And while there are images from earlier wars (such as the Crimean War, from October 1853 to March 1856), I guess the American Civil War was the first to be documented so extensively in this medium.

These are just a few archival images that illustrate the National Geographic’s The Untold Civil War, by James Robertson, published in 2011.

Also, another aspect that caught my attention was the role that the railways played in moving troops and materiel in the various theaters where the war was contested. Again, this was probably a first in terms of the extensive and critical role of railways in any conflict. And the wireless of course, which permitted ‘rapid’ communications about the state of the conflict, provided the lines hadn’t been cut. Like the railways, the lines were frequently targeted.

A war that ended 160 years ago, but started on 12 April 1861 when Confederate forces bombarded Fort Sumter (in South Carolina), and which ended to all intents and purposes almost exactly four years later on 9 April 1865 when Confederate General Robert E Lee (right below) surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Union General Ulysses S Grant (left) at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia.

On 18 December 1865, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution was proclaimed, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, once and for all. And with it the root cause for secession and war four years earlier. But, as we know, the abolition of slavery and emancipation of slaves did not correct the ingrained racism that did not die away and continues to this day, despite legislation conferring civil rights and the like.

Over the past decade I purchased (from Half Price Books in St Paul) several books² (accounts and biographies) about the war, while visiting family in Minnesota.

And it was one of these, April 1865: The Month that Saved America (first published in 2001) by acclaimed author and historian Jay Winik that I decided to read for a second time, and took it with me on our latest trip to Minnesota in May.

Winik highlights three events that all occurred within a fortnight. First there was the evacuation and fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond between 2-4 April.

Second, with the writing on the wall, Lee surrendered to Grant on 9 April in the McLean house at Appomattox Courthouse.

Lee signs the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia, witnessed by Ulysses S Grant and his officers.

The surrender terms were quite favourable to the Confederates, but there was a lingering fear that undefeated troops would take to the mountains and wage guerrilla war for decades. However, Confederate General Joseph E Johnston surrendered his large army to William Tecumseh Sherman at Bennett Place in North Carolina on 26 April. Fighting overall in the Civil War came to an end by the end of May 1865.

And third, was the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on 14 April (he actually died the following day). This had major ramifications for the post-bellum rapprochement that Linclon had long envisaged, and with the ascendancy of his Vice President Andrew Johnson to the highest office, there was no certainty that a lasting peace would prevail.

Not all reviewers agree with Winik’s interpretation that April 1865 was so crucial. Events earlier in the same year, and perhaps since the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg in 1863 meant that the Confederacy was always destined to fail.

But April 1865 is an easy read. One aspect that I really appreciated were the vignettes of the main protagonists that Winik interspersed with the main chronology of events. It’s remarkable that the Confederates were as successful on the battlefield over the course of the war, albeit their cause ultimately ending in failure, given the jealousies between many of their general officers. I guess most soldiers who reach general rank must have pretty big egos.

Over the course of our road trips across the USA, Steph and I have taken the opportunity of visiting several historical sites connecting with the Civil War.

In 2017, we drove from Georgia to Minnesota, taking in Savannah (the destination of Sherman’s March to the Sea in November and December 1864, and through the Appalachians, and crossing (as we did in 2019) much of the region in Virginia and West Virginia in particular where many of the battles were fought.

In 2019, on a trip that took in many northeast and Atlantic states, we visited both the Gettysburg battlefield site and Appomattox Court House.

Virginia Monument (General Robert E Lee on horseback)
Acoss the battlefield
The McLean House at Appomattox Courthouse
Lee signs the surrender
Inside the surrender room
The courthouse

In 2018, travelling from Maine to Minnesota, we passed through Ohio, the birthplace of two of the most famous generals of the Civil War: Grant (in Point Pleasant) and Sherman (in Lancaster); and the boyhood home—in Somerset—of Philip Sheridan (who was born in Albany, NY, but grew up in Ohio).

The mural of Sherman on the wall of the Glass Museum in Lancaster that I illustrated in that post is no longer there. It has been whitewashed over!

I’ve just completed an abridged biography (see below, down from four volumes) of General Lee. Rather tough going, I must say, with so much miniscule detail rather than a broader horizon to explore.

¹Over 620,000 killed. In fact, more soldiers died from post combat infection of wounds or from diseases like dysentery and measles that spread like wildfire through camps. See this link for a breakdown of the statistics.

² Here are the books about the Civil War that I have read:

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Killing me softly . . . memories maketh the man! (Updated 25 February 2025)*

Memories. Powerful; fleeting; joyful; or sad. Sometimes, unfortunately, too painful and hidden away in the deepest recesses of the mind, only to be dragged to the surface with great reluctance.

Some memories float to the surface at the slightest instigation. Often all it takes is a glimpse of a treasured landscape, a word spoken by a friend, a few bars of music, or a particular song. Some memories need more persuasion.

And then, one is transported back days, months, years, even decades. Memories can be vague; they can be crystal clear, even while the precise context may be fuzzy round the edges – where, when, or why. They are part and parcel of who each and every one of us is as a person. Without memories, we are nobody.

I have one particular – and very strong – memory whenever Roberta Flack starts to kill me softly . . . Yes, one song. Just a few bars, and I’m taken back 52 years to late January 1973. Lima, Peru.

So why this particular song?

I’d arrived in Lima at the beginning of the month to start my assignment as Associate Taxonomist at the International Potato Center (CIP) in La Molina on the eastern outskirts of the city (now totally subsumed into Lima’s urban sprawl).

After spending a couple of weeks holed up in the Pensión Beech (a guest house in the San Isidro district of Lima), I signed a contract for my own apartment on the 11th or 12th floor of an apartment building (still standing today) at Pasaje Los Pinos in the heart of the Miraflores District. In 1973, there was just a dirt parking lot in front of the apartment building, and the Todos Supermarket (no longer there) was to one side. Now the apartment building is surrounded by high-rise on all sides. It’s a wonder that it has survived about 50 years of earthquakes, including several rather large ones. It never did seem that sturdy to me, but there again, what do I know about engineering?

The arrow indicates the approximate location of my apartment. In January 1973 this building stood in a wide open space – no longer the case.

I moved in, just after my small consignment of airfreight (including a stereo system) had arrived a few days earlier. I had music!

Steph joined me in Lima at the beginning of July 1973, and we stayed in the same apartment for about six weeks more before moving to a larger one elsewhere in Miraflores. My stereo is prominently displayed on the left!

And on the radio station that I tuned into the local radio station, (Radio Panamericana, Radio Pacifico, or perhaps Radio Miraflores?), Killing Me Softly With His Song was played, almost non-stop it seemed, from its release on 21 January 1973 for the next couple of months. It became an instant worldwide success for Roberta Flack. But she wasn’t the first to record it.

KMSWHS was penned by American lyricist Norman Gimbel (who passed away in December 2018), with music by his long-time collaborator Charles Fox. However, there is some dispute over the song’s origins. KMSWHS was originally recorded by American singer Lori Lieberman in 1971.

Whatever the situation, KMSWHS remains a great favorite of mine. Whenever I hear it, I’m 24 years old again, starting out on a career in international agricultural research for development. The world was my oyster!

As I wrote a few years back, I would include KMSWHS on my list of eights discs to take to a desert island. That perspective has not changed.

Yesterday, 24 February 2025, Roberta Flack died in New York at the age of 88.

  • Originally published on 7 January 2019
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The Commonwealth Potato Collection – it really is a treasure trove (revised and updated)*

I originally wrote this story in August 2021 after a friend and former colleague, Dr Glenn Bryan¹ posted a link on his Facebook page to a story—Treasure trove could hold secrets to potato problems—that had just appeared in the online edition of Dundee’s The Courier.

It was about the Commonwealth Potato Collection (CPC) that is held at The James Hutton Institute (JHI) at Invergowrie, just west of Dundee.

Until a couple of years ago (when he retired) Glenn led the Potato Genetics and Breeding Group at JHI, with Gaynor McKenzie as the CPC curator, a position she still occupies.

Glenn Bryan and Gaynor McKenzie at the James Hutton Institute in Invergowrie, where wild potato species in the Commonwealth Potato Collection are conserved.

The Commonwealth Potato Collection has a long and distinguished history, going back more than 80 years. It is one of a handful of potato germplasm collections around the world in which breeders have identified disease and pest resistance genes to enhance the productivity of cultivated varieties. The CPC is particularly important from a plant quarantine perspective because the collection has been routinely tested and cleaned for various pathogens, particularly seed-borne pathogens.

Jack Hawkes

It is a collection with which Steph and I have both a personal and professional connection, from the 1970s and 80s. It’s also the legacy of one man, Professor Jack Hawkes (1915-2007) with whom I had the privilege of studying for both my MSc and PhD degrees.

Let me tell that story.

In December 1938, a young botanist—just 23 years old the previous June—set off from Liverpool, headed to Lima, Peru to join the British Empire Potato Collecting Expedition to South America, the adventure of a lifetime.

Jack in Bolivia in 1939

John ‘Jack’ Gregory Hawkes, a Christ’s College, Cambridge graduate, was destined to become one of the world’s leading potato experts and a champion of the conservation and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture.

He was the taxonomic botanist on the 1939 expedition, which was led by experienced plant collector Edwards Kent Balls (1892-1984). Medical doctor and amateur botanist William ‘Bill’ Balfour Gourlay (1879-1966) was the third member of the expedition. Balls and Gourlay had been collecting plants in Mexico (including some potatoes) in 1938 before moving on to Peru for the ‘Empire’ expedition.

The expedition had originally been scheduled to start in 1937, but had to be delayed because of ill health of the original expedition leader, Dr PS Hudson, Director of the Empire Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics in Cambridge. Jack had been hired as his assistant.

Whilst waiting for the expedition to get underway, Jack took the opportunity—in August 1938—to visit Leningrad to pick the brains of Russian botanists, Drs SM Bukasov, VS Juzepczuk, and VS Lechnovicz who had already collected potatoes in South America. Jack openly acknowledged that ‘as a raw recently graduated student, [he] knew very little about potatoes’.

Nikolai Vavilov

Not only did Jack receive useful advice from these knowledgeable botanists, but he also met with the great geneticist and ‘Father of Plant Genetic Resources’ Nikolai Vavilov on several occasions during his visit to Leningrad and Moscow, ‘an experience that changed [his] life in many ways’. Vavilov had a profound effect on Jack’s subsequent career as an academic botanist and genetic resources pioneer. Alas there do not appear to be any surviving photos of Jack with Vavilov.

‘Solanum vavilovii’ growing at an experiment station near Leningrad in 1938

In Leningrad, Jack took this photo (right) of a wild potato species that had been described as Solanum vavilovii by Juzepczuk and Bukasov in 1937. Sadly that name is no longer taxonomically valid, and vavilovii is now considered simply as a variant of the species Solanum wittmackii that had been described by the German botanist Friedrich August Georg Bitter in 1913.

The Empire expedition lasted eight months from January 1939, covering northern Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and ending in Colombia (a country where Jack was to reside for three years from 1948 when he was seconded to establish a national potato research station near Bogota).

Route taken by the Empire Potato Collecting Expedition

More than 1150 samples of cultivated and wild potatoes were collected in these five countries as well as a further 46 samples collected by Balls and Gourlay in Mexico in 1938.

Here is a small selection of photographs taken during the expedition (and a link to an album of photos).

By the time the expedition ended in early September 1939, war with Germany had already been declared, and Jack’s return to the UK by ship convoy from Halifax, Newfoundland was not as comfortable as the outbound voyage nine months earlier, docking in Liverpool early in November.

Jack published an official expedition report in March 1941. Then, in 2003, he published an interesting and lengthy memoir of the expedition, Hunting the Wild Potato in the South American Andes.

In December 2021, my friend Dr Abigail Amey and I published a website (with permission of the Hawkes family) about Jack’s experiences of the 1938-39 expedition, as well as others to the USA, Mexico, and Central America in 1958, and Bolivia in 1971. Just click on the red box below (and others) to open the links.

The website also has several of Jack’s original 16mm films (which we were able to digitise through a special grant from the Crop Wild Relatives Project at Kew and the Crop Trust).

Redcliffe N Salaman

Potato tubers (and presumably seeds) were shipped back to the UK, and after a quarantine inspection, were planted out in a glasshouse at the Potato Virus Research Station, Cambridge whose director was the renowned botanist (and originally a medical doctor) Redcliffe Nathan Salaman, author of the seminal work on potatoes, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, first published in 1949 and reprinted with a new introduction by Hawkes in 1985. I jealously guard the signed copy that Jack gave me.

On his return to the UK in 1939 Jack began to study the collected germplasm, describing several new species, and completing his PhD thesis (supervised by Salaman) at the University of Cambridge in 1941.

South American potato species in the Cambridge glasshouse in the summer of 1940

Among the species identified in the course of Jack’s dissertation research was Solanum ballsii from northern Argentina, which he dedicated to EK Balls in a formal description in 1944. However, in his 1963 revised taxonomy of the tuber-bearing Solanums (potatoes), Jack (with his Danish colleague Jens Peter Hjerting, 1917-2012) recognized Solanum ballsii simply as a subspecies of Solanum vernei, a species which has since provided many important sources of resistance to the potato cyst nematode.

Jack Hawkes in the glasshouse of the Empire Potato Collection at Cambridge in July 1947.

The 1939 germplasm was the foundation of the Empire Potato Collection. When the collection curator Dr Kenneth S Dodds was appointed Director of the John Innes Institute in Bayfordbury in 1954, the collection moved with him, and was renamed the Commonwealth Potato Collection.

By the end of the decade (or early 1960s) the CPC was on the move again. This time to the Scottish Plant Breeding Station (SPBS) at Pentlandfield just south of Edinburgh when Dr Norman W Simmonds moved there in 1959. He rose through the ranks to become the station’s Director.

Dodds and his colleague Dr GJ Paxman traveled through South America during 1959-60, and their research on the genetics of diploid potatoes was based on some of the material collected. Dodds and Simmonds also collected potatoes in early 1963.

Dodds with Peruvian botanist Cesar Vargas
Dodds with Bolivian botanist Martin Cardenas in Cochabamba

But that was not the end of the CPC’s peripatetic existence. It remained at the SPBS until the early 1980s, when the SPBS amalgamated with the Scottish Horticultural Research Institute (which became the Scottish Crop Research Institute or SCRI, and now known as the James Hutton Institute), and the collection moved to its present site near Dundee.

Today, the CPC comprises some 1500 samples or accessions of about 80 wild and cultivated potato species. And over two-thirds were collected by Hawkes himself. Another 9% of the collection were collected by Dodds and his colleagues, as mentioned earlier. The remainder represent donations over the years from various individuals and institutions.

I am not sure how much the CPC grew in the intervening years, but there was a significant boost to the size and importance of the collection around 1987. Let me explain.

As I already mentioned, Jack spent three years in Colombia from 1948, returning to the UK in 1951 when he was appointed Lecturer in Taxonomy in the Department of Botany at the University of Birmingham. He was given a personal chair as Professor of Taxonomic Botany in April 1961, and became Head of Department and Mason Professor of Botany in July 1967. He remained at Birmingham until retirement in September 1982.

It was during his Birmingham years that Jack’s work on the tuber-bearing Solanums expanded significantly with several important monographs and taxonomic revisions published, based on his own field work over the years and experimental studies back at Birmingham on the potato samples he brought back to the UK and which formed an important collection in its own right. Because of the quarantine threat from these seeds (particularly of sexually-transmitted pathogens or new variants of potato viruses already present in the UK), Jack had a special quarantine licence from the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF, now DEFRA) to maintain his collection at Birmingham.

In 1958, with Peter Hjerting and young research assistant Richard Lester (who later joined the Department of Botany as a Lecturer), Jack made a six month expedition to the USA , Mexico, and Central America.

Here is another account of that trip from the University of Birmingham Gazette. Besides potatoes, many other species were made for other institutions and botanic gardens.

Collecting a sample of Solanum agrimonifolium (No. 1854) in Guatemala. L: Jack Hawkes, Peter Hjerting, and Morse (driver?); R: Richard Lester

Just three months after I arrived at Birmingham in September 1970 to enrol on the MSc course on plant genetic resources, Jack was off on his travels once again, this time to Bolivia accompanied by Peter Hjerting once again, his research assistant Phil Cribb and, in South America by Zósimo Huamán from the International Potato Center (CIP) and Moisés Zavaleta and others from Bolivia.

This is the official trip report. Here are some images from the 1971 expedition, courtesy of Phil Cribb.

Jack and Peter made another trip to Bolivia in 1974 (with research assistant Dave Astley), and another in 1980. They published their monograph of The Potatoes of Bolivia in 1989.

In September 1971, Zósimo Huamán and Moisés Zavaleta came to Birmingham to study on the genetic resources MSc course. In that same cohort was a young botanist, Stephanie Tribble, recently graduated from the University of Wales – Swansea (now Swansea University). During the summer of 1972, Steph and I became ‘an item’, so-to-speak. However, by then I was already making plans to leave the UK and join CIP in Lima by January 1973, and on graduation, Steph was keen to find a position to use the experiences and skills she had gained on the course.

Just at that time, a Scientific Officer position opened at the SPBS, as assistant to Dalton Glendinning who was the curator of the CPC. Steph duly applied and was appointed from about October that year. Jack must have supported her application. Coincidentally, the MSc course external examiner was no other that Norman Simmonds who met Steph during his course assessment.

I moved to Peru in January 1973, and within a few days discovered that Jack had mentioned Steph to CIP’s Director General, Richard Sawyer. Well, to cut a long story short, Steph was offered a position as Assistant Geneticist at CIP, to support management of CIP’s large potato collection, similar to the role she’d had at Pentlandfield. She resigned from the SPBS and joined me in Lima in July that year. We married there in October, remaining with CIP in Peru and Central America for another eight years.

Steph working in one of CIP’s screen-houses at La Molina on the eastern outskirts of Lima in 1974.

In April 1981 I was appointed Lecturer in Plant Biology at Birmingham, 18 months before Jack’s retirement, the aim being that I would assume Jack’s teaching commitments on the MSc course. When I also took over the Hawkes potato collection in 1982, I had high hopes of identifying funding for biosystematics and pre-breeding research, and continuing the Birmingham focus on potatoes.

Dave Downing was the glasshouse technician who carefully managed the Hawkes collection at Birmingham for many years.

That was not the case, and as the collection needed a dedicated glasshouse and technician I could not justify (nor financially support) holding on to such valuable research space. And, in any case, continuing with the Hawkes collection was actually blocking the opportunities for other potato research because of the MAFF-imposed restrictions.

So, with some regret but also acknowledging that Jack’s collection would be better placed elsewhere, I contacted my colleagues at the CPC to see if they would be interested to receive it—lock, stock, and barrel. And that indeed was what happened. I’m sure many new potato lines were added to the CPC. The germplasm was placed in quarantine in the first instance, and has passed through various stages of testing before being added officially to the CPC. Throughout the 80s and 90s Jack would visit the CPC from time-to-time, and look through the materials, helping with the correct identification of species and the like.

Jack’s interest in and contributions to potato science remained with him almost up to his death in 2007. By then he had become increasingly frail, and had moved into a care home, his wife Barbara having passed away some years previously. By then, Jack’s reputation and legacy was sealed. Not only has his scientific output contributed to the conservation and use of potato genetic resources worldwide, embodied in the CPC that he helped establish all those decades earlier, but through the MSc course that he founded in 1969, hundreds of professionals worldwide have continued to carry the genetic conservation torch. A fine legacy, indeed!

¹ Glenn and I go back almost 30 years when, as a young scientist at the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, he was a member of a rice research project, funded by the British government, that brought together staff at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines where I was Head of the Genetic Resources Center, the University of Birmingham (where I had been a faculty member for a decade from 1981), and the JIC to use molecular markers to study IRRI’s large and globally-important germplasm collection conserved in its International Rice Genebank.

L-R: me, Glenn, and John Newbury (who later became professor at the University of Worcester) during a spot of sight-seeing near IRRI in 1993.

  • Originally published on 24 August 2021.
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Reflections of a 1990s genebanker

Since I started this blog in February 2012, I have written a number of stories about rice genetic resources and their conservation at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, one of the centers of the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research (CGIAR).

Written over several years, there is inevitably some overlap between the posts. I have now brought them together. Just click on the red boxes below to read each one or expand an image.

I was privileged to manage the International Rice Genebank at IRRI (the IRG, formerly known as the International Rice Germplasm Center or IGRC until 1995) for a decade from July 1991, as Head of the Genetic Resources Center (GRC) [1].

The IRRI campus at Los Baños, 70 km south of Manila. The Brady Laboratory (second from left) houses the genebank cold stores.

There are twelve CGIAR genebanks, and IRRI’s is one of the largest. It’s certainly the oldest. In April, IRRI will celebrate its 65th anniversary [2]. For almost six and a half decades, IRRI has successfully managed the world’s largest collection of rice genetic resources (farmer or landrace varieties, improved varieties, wild rice species, genetic stocks, and the like).

There’s perhaps no crop more important than rice. It’s the staple food of half the world’s population on a daily basis. The genebank is a crucial resource for plant breeders who use the germplasm to sustain and increase agricultural productivity, with the aim of reducing hunger among the world’s poor.

IRRI released the first of the semi-dwarf varieties in the 1960s; many others have followed over the decades, with increasingly more complex pedigrees.

Pedigree of rice variety IR72 showing 22 landraces (boxes with bold lines) and one wild species, Oryza nivara. In contrast, IR8, the first of the widely-grown modern semi-dwarf varieties (indicated by the arrow) had only three landraces in its pedigree.

When I joined IRRI, there were just over 70,000 seed samples (or accessions as they are known in genebank parlance) in the genebank.

During the 1990s, the collection grew by about 30% to a little over 100,000 accessions. This was quite remarkable in itself, given that the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) had come into effect in 1992, and for for at least a decade or more thereafter, many countries were reluctant to share their national germplasm until benefit-sharing mechanisms had been worked out. It says a lot about the mutual respect between national programs (particularly in Asia) and IRRI that we were able to mount a significant program to collect rice varieties and wild species. But more on that later.

Today the collection is approaching 135,000 accessions, safely duplicated in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV, under the auspices of the Government of Norway and the Crop Trust). Prior to 1991, and for at least the next decade or more, duplicates samples were also held in so-called ‘black box’ storage at the National Laboratory for Genetic Resources Preservation in Fort Collins, Colorado. I’m not sure whether IRRI has continued its arrangement with Fort Collins now that the SGSV is open.

When the SGSV vault was opened in 2008, IRRI deposited more than 70,000 accessions, the first to be registered in the Vault. Since then, IRRI has made six more deposits, for a total of 133,707 accessions, almost the entire collection.

Given the amount of publicity that the SGSV has received, one could be forgiven for not knowing that there are many more genebanks around the world.

Inevitably there has been some misguided (as far as I’m concerned) criticism of the SGSV that I attempted to rebut in the next post.

The IRRI genebank became the first genebank of the CGIAR system to be identified by the Crop Trust for in-perpetuity funding that will ensure the availability of the conserved germplasm decades into the future.

The fact that IRRI was able to deposit so many accessions in the SGSV and receive in-perpetuity funding is due—in no small part—to the many changes we made to the management of the genebank and its collection during the 1990s. And which pre-emptively prepared it for the changes that all the CGIAR genebanks would eventually have to make.

But I’m getting ahead of myself just a little.

Although I had been involved with the conservation and use of plant genetic resources since 1970 (when I arrived at the University of Birmingham to attend the one-year MSc course on genetic conservation), I’d never worked on rice nor managed a genebank when I joined IRRI in 1991. All my experience to date had been with potatoes in South and Central America, and several grain legumes while teaching at Birmingham during the 1980s.

1991 was a fortuitous time to join IRRI. I was recruited by Director General Klaus Lampe (right), who had been appointed by the institute’s Board of Trustees in 1998 to revive the institute’s fortunes and refurbish its ageing infrastructure.

Lampe was very supportive of the genetic resources program, and it helped that I had a senior position as a department head, so was able to meet with him directly on a regular basis to discuss my plans for the genebank.

Before 1991 quite a number of staff retired, including the previous and first head of the IRGC, Dr Te-Tzu Chang (known universally simple as ‘TT’). TT and I had very different management styles, and I was determined to involve my genebank staff in the changes that I believed should be made. I spent six months determining how the genebank operations could be significantly enhanced.

As I said, Klaus Lampe was supportive, approving recruitment of junior staff to help with the considerable backlog of seed samples for cleaning and registering in the genebank, as well as including the genebank in the institute’s program of infrastructure refurbishment and equipment upgrades.

These two posts describe many of the changes we made, and include a video about the genebank that I made in 2010 just before I left IRRI.

I was fortunate to inherit a great group of staff, totally dedicated to the genetic conservation cause, and much more knowledgeable about rice than I ever became [3].

I quickly identified Ms Flora ‘Pola’ de Guzman (all Filipinos have a nickname) as a potential genebank manager, and she continued in that role until her retirement a couple of years back. When the in-perpetuity agreement was signed in 2018, Pola was given a special award, recognising her 40 years service to the conservation of rice genetic resources.

Inside the International Rice Genebank Active Collection, with genebank manager Pola de Guzman

I asked Renato ‘Ato’ Reaño to manage all the genebank’s field operations. Ato has also now retired.

One of the key aspects that had to be addressed was data management. As you can imagine, for a collection of 70,000+ accessions that I inherited in 1991, there was a mountain of data about provenance, as well data on morphological characters and response to biotic and abiotic stresses, across the cultivated rices (two different species) and 20+ wild species of Oryza. Essentially there were three databases that couldn’t effectively talk to each other. Big changes had to be made, which I described in this post.

It took almost two years, but when completed we had developed the International Rice Genebank Collection Information System (IRGCIS) to manage all the operations of the genebank. It has now been superseded by an international system based on the US-developed germplasm information network, GRIN.

That information situation also reminds of another information ‘bee in my bonnet’, which I wrote about here.

In my interviews at IRRI in January 1991, I stressed the need for the genebank to carry out research, something that had not been contemplated when the GRC position was advertised the previous year. In fact, I made it a condition of accepting a job offer that the genebank should conduct germplasm-relevant research, such as studies of seed survival, rice taxonomy, and the management of the collection.

I had concerns that we had insufficient information about the longevity of seeds in storage, or how the environment at Los Baños affected the quality of rice seeds grown there. We developed new seed production protocols, and post-harvest management in terms of seed drying. We installed a bespoke seed drying room with a capacity of over 1 tonne of seeds. In the 2000s (after I had moved from GRC to a senior management position at IRRI), seed physiologist Fiona Hay was recruited who improved on the seed handling protocols that we developed and which had already shown to be effective in increasing seed quality for long-term conservation.

Early in the decade, and with funding from the British government, we set up a collaborative project with my former colleagues at the University of Birmingham as well as at the John Innes Centre to study how molecular markers could be used to study the diversity in the rice collection and its management.

In 1994, we received a large grant (>USD 2.3 million) from the Swiss government:

  • to collect rice varieties and wild species throughout Asia, Africa, and parts of South America (essentially to try and complete the collecting of germplasm that had been little explored);
  • to conduct research about on-farm management of rice genetic resources; and
  • to train personnel from national germplasm programs in collecting, conservation techniques, and data management.

During the 1990s, IRRI had a special rice project with the Government of Laos, and a staff member based in Vientiane. Since little rice germplasm had been collected in that country, we recruited Dr Seepana Appa Rao to collect rice varieties there.

Appa Rao (right) and his Lao counterpart, Dr Chay Bounphanousay (left) sampling a rice variety from a Lao farmer.

Over a five year period he and his Lao colleagues collected more than 13,000 samples, now safely conserved in the International Rice Genebank. We also built a small genebank near Vientiane to house the germplasm locally.

My colleagues and I were quite productive in terms of research and publications. This post lists all the publications on which I was author/co-author, and there are links therein to PDF copies of many of them.

Every year, IRRI receives thousands of visitors, and when I first arrived at IRRI, it seemed as if anyone and everyone who wanted to visit the genebank was allowed to do so. On more than one occasion—until I put a stop to it—I’d find our colleagues from Visitor Services taking a large party of visitors, hordes of schoolchildren even, into the cold stores. With such large numbers it was not possible to keep all the doors closed, disrupting the carefully controlled temperature and humidity environment in the genebank and its laboratories.

I had to limit the number of visitors inside the genebank significantly, and ask my staff to take some of the load of attending to visitors. Nevertheless, I do understand the need to explain the importance of genetic resources and the role of the genebank to visitors, and build a constituency who can support the genebank and what it aims to achieve.

But it was a joy to meet with visitors such as wheat breeder, ‘Father of the Green Revolution’, and 1970 Nobel Peace Laureate, Dr Norman Borlaug.

With Dr Norman Borlaug in the IRG Active Collection in the early 1990s, before we transferred the germplasm to aluminum pouches.

Finally, let me say something about IRRI’s genetic conservation role in the context of the CGIAR.

In the early 1990s, the heads of the CGIAR genebanks would meet each year as the Inter-Center Working Group on Genetic Resources (ICWG-GR). I attended my first meeting in January 1993 in Addis Ababa at the International Livestock Centre for Africa (ILCA, now part of the International Livestock Research Institute or ILRI). I was elected chair for three years, and during my tenure the System-wide Genetic Resources Program (SGRP) was launched with the ICWG-GR as its steering committee.

Earlier I mentioned the CBD. There’s no doubt that during the 1990s the whole realm of genetic resources became highly politicized, with the CGIAR centers contributing to CBD discussions as they related to agricultural biodiversity, and through the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

The organization of the genebanks in the CGIAR has undergone several iterations since I moved away from this area in May 2001 (when I joined IRRI’s senior management team as Director for Program Planning and Communications). My successor Dr Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton enthusiastically took on the role of representing the institute in the discussions on the formulation and implementation of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA). The Treaty aims to guarantee food security through the conservation, exchange, and sustainable use of the world’s plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It also focuses on fair and equitable benefit sharing and recognition of farmers’ rights.

In 2016-17, I led a review of the Genebanks CRP (CGIAR Research Program). Since then, the Genebanks CRP evolved into the Genebank Platform, and is now the CGIAR Initiative on Genebanks.

What I can say is that all the CGIAR genebanks have raised their game with respect to the crops they conserve. Working with the Crop Trust, standards have increased, and genebanks held to account more rigorously in terms of how they are being managed. Nevertheless, I think that we can say that the CGIAR continues to play one of the major roles in genetic resources conservation worldwide.

[1] GRC comprised two units: the genebank (my day-to-day responsibility), and the International Network for the Genetic Evaluation of Rice or INGER, which was managed basis by one of my colleagues.

[2] It seems like only yesterday that I was organizing the institute’s Golden Jubilee in 2010, after which I retired and returned to the UK.

[3] Three key staff, Ms Eves Loresto, Tom Clemeno, and Ms. Amita ‘Amy’ Juliano sadly passed away, as have several other junior staff.

 

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Unsurpassed beauty, nature, and thousands of years of history: the value of our heritage charities

For many years, Steph and I toyed with becoming members of the National Trust. But as we were living overseas, and only coming back to the UK each year on leave for just a few weeks, we didn’t think it was worth the membership cost.

However, when I retired in April 2010 and we moved back to the UK, we became members in February 2011. Since then, we have visited 153 properties, mostly historic houses and gardens, but also some of the most beautiful landscapes protected by the Trust, such as the White Cliffs of Dover and the Durham coast. 

We received gift membership of English Heritage (which cares for 400 historic places) at Christmas 2014, and made our first visits as members by April 2015. We had visited Witley Court, Worcestershire near our home in Bromsgrove several times before becoming members, and Belsay Hall, Dunstanburgh Castle, and Rievaulx Abbey when visiting our younger daughter in the northeast of England. Now that we live near Newcastle upon Tyne, we have in fact explored more English Heritage sites than National Trust locally; compared to further south, there are relatively few National Trust properties here.

Visiting these heritage sites gives us a purpose to get out of the house, benefit our physical and mental welfare, and to explore and learn more about the history of this nation of ours.

Over recent years, we have also taken week-long breaks or longer in various parts of the country to visit many of the heritage properties there. Such as Scotland in 2015, Northern Ireland in 2017, Cornwall in 2018, Kent and East Sussex in 2019, Hampshire and West Sussex in 2022, North Wales in 2023, and East Anglia in 2024.

This map shows all the National Trust and English Heritage properties we have now visited. You will have to zoom in to see more of the detail. There are also links to properties managed by partner organizations like the National Trust for Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, and Cadw in Wales, as well as a few other sites not affiliated to any of these.

On this page, you can find a list of all 239 properties we have visited, by region, with links to a blog post I wrote, perhaps a photo album, or the official website. In any case, my blog posts are lavishly illustrated by my own photographs. There are also regional maps.

Just under a year ago, I wrote about some of the favorite places we had visited. Today’s blog updates the numbers somewhat.

The National Trust was the vision of its three founders in 1885: Octavia Hill, Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, and Sir Robert Hunter.

Last week, on 12 January to be precise, the National Trust celebrated its 130th anniversary, and launched a 10-year strategy to 2035, People and Nature Thriving.

Today, the National Trust looks after more than 250,000 hectares of farmland, 780 miles of coastline and 500 historic places, gardens and nature reserves.

And despite the best (or worst) efforts of campaign group and forum Restore Trust to undermine the credibility, management, and success of the National Trust as a charity, the National Trust is overwhelmingly supported by its members (as evidenced from the support at last November’s AGM held in Newcastle), and provides a warm welcome for its thousands of members and visitors at all its sites.

As I was drafting this post, I realised that I’d first visited a couple of properties, Dovedale in Derbyshire and Little Moreton Hall near Congleton, in Cheshire more than 70 years ago, and another, Biddulph Grange, decades before the National Trust acquired the garden.

The Stepping Stones in Dovedale. That’s me, on the right beside my mother, along with my brothers and sister and cousins. I reckon this photo was taken around 1951.

My father was the staff photographer at the Congleton Chronicle, and I remember visiting Little Moreton Hall with him when he took this photo and others of the Manley Morris men in 1954.

The Manley Morris Men at Little Moreton Hall on 8 May 1954.

As to Biddulph Grange, Dad (and Mum) would visit the hospital on Christmas Day and take photos of Santa visiting the wards. Even after we moved to Leek in 1956 and Dad was no longer with the Congleton Chronicle, they would return to Biddulph Grange each Christmas until the early 1960s.

And attend some of the social functions held there for staff and friends. When Steph and I visited Biddulph Grange together for the first time in 2011, there was on display an album of photos about the previous history of the property as a hospital. I recognised many as taken by my Dad. Including this one at a staff summer dance. My mother is standing, fifth from the left, on the fourth row. I snapped this one on my phone.

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Music stirs hidden memories . . .

Hidden but not forgotten. They are just lurking deep in the mind’s archive waiting to be awakened.

And that’s what happened to me just the other afternoon. I was listening to Classic FM. Well, just hearing really, not paying attention as I was reading a book at the time. High brow Muzak.

Pachelbel’s Canon in D major. A popular piece of music (number 35/300 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2024 chosen by listeners), by German composer Johann Pachelbel (right, 1653-1706), although its date of composition is not known with any certainty.

As I put my book down and listened more attentively, lots of memories resurfaced from my time in Lima, Peru in the early 1970s.

Here’s the twist, however. I’m not sure all those years ago if it was Pachelbel’s Canon or the  Adagio in G minor by ‘Tomaso Albinoni’ that I heard. Let me explain.

I’m guessing it was sometime between December 1973 and March 1974. So why should I zero in on those particular months?

I know it was post-July 1973 because that’s when Steph joined me in Lima. And before April 1975, because that’s when we returned to the UK for a few months. And in any case we had already given up our apartment in Miraflores after the October 1974 earthquake, and spent the next six months house-sitting for colleagues from the International Potato Center (CIP) where Steph and I worked.

I do remember it was a weekend, and the weather was glorious. Bright and sunny, and rather hot, typical Lima summer weather (unlike the gloomy, foggy days of the middle months of the year). We’d left our apartment to go shopping, and pick up copies of Time and Newsweek from a bookshop in the San Isidro district that we often visited. This particular bookshop or libreria was located in a small shopping center overlooking Avda. Paseo de la Republica/Via Expressa, just opposite the Petroperú building.

I don’t think it’s there any more. I’ve looked on Google Maps and Streetview and it looks like the area has been redeveloped in the intervening decades. I hardly recognise any of the surroundings.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we also decided to browse the bookshop’s music section. And in the background, I heard this piece of music I’d never heard before. The Canon or the Adagio? I don’t recall. But both pieces were on the same vinyl that I purchased there and then! I’ve enjoyed both ever since.

Tomaso Albinoni (left below, 1671-1751) was a Venetian composer, but did he write the Adagio in G minor? Is it a musical hoax? Its composition is attributed to Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto (right below, 1910-1998), an expert on Albinoni. He is said to have composed/elaborated the Adagio based on a fragment of one of Albinoni’s manuscripts while others believe he composed the whole piece. Certainly Giazotto had the copyright.

I was totally unaware of this interesting back story. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful and much appreciated piece of music, that gained position 170/300 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame 2024. Enjoy this interpretation.

 

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An unlikely trinity . . .

What comprises an unlikely trinity? Music, science, and film. Let me explain.

It’s remarkable how a piece of music can resurrect memories from the deep recesses of one’s mind.

Christoph W Gluck

Just as Steph and I sat down to dinner last Saturday evening, I chose a CD (always classical) to play in the background as we ate. I’ve no idea precisely why I chose the opera Orfeo ed Euridice (first performed in October 1762) by Christoph Willibald Gluck other than it’s one of my favorite pieces of music. There’s one aria in particular, Che farò senza Euridice? (from Act 3) sung by the character of Orfeo, that became a signature concert piece for British soprano Kathleen Ferrier. And it’s a recording of hers that I remember from my childhood in the early 1950s. Ferrier died at age 41 in 1953, and I was born in 1948.

Traditionally however, Orfeo is played/sung by a counter tenor. And in this Philips release (CD 434 093-2, and available on Spotify) the counter tenor is Derek Lee Ragin.

Enjoy the power of Ragin’s voice as he reaches the highest notes in Che farò. Sends shivers down my spine.

I first came across this John Eliot Gardiner/Ragin/Sylvia McNair collaboration on a Lufthansa flight from the Philippines (where I was working at the International Rice Research Institute) to Dublin, Ireland (via Frankfurt) around March/April 1996. I flew quite frequently to Europe in the 1990s and Lufthansa was often my airline of choice because of the good connections to Rome. I always made the trip more enjoyable by listening to Lufthansa’s excellent classical music channel. And it was on that particular trip to Dublin that I heard this particular recording for the first time, and listened to the whole opera.

With some free time in Dublin, I took the opportunity of walking around the city center, and came across a record store on Grafton Street, where this recording of Orfeo ed Euridice was in stock. I also bought Mark Knopfler’s Golden Heart that had just been released. It’s remained a favorite of mine ever since.

So what was I doing in Dublin? There’s no obvious rice connection.

Well, I had been invited to interview for the Chair of Botany (1711) at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), and on a grey early Spring morning, I found myself among six candidates including one internal candidate who was subsequently appointed to the Chair (one of the oldest professorships at TCD). I’d certainly traveled furthest by a long chalk.

So that explains two points of the trinity: music and science. So what about film?

Educating Rita was released in 1983, starring Michael Caine and Julie Walters and written by Willy Russell based on his stage play. Although the storyline takes place at the Open University in England, several scenes were filmed on the Trinity College campus.

And one intimate scene between Caine and Walters was filmed in the lecture theater in the Botany Department. Or so the story goes. I’ve heard that but not (yet) been able to verify. And it was in that very same lecture theater that I presented my candidacy seminar.

Botany building at TCD

It’s interesting to note that botany is still offered today at TCD. Not ‘plant sciences’ or ‘plant biology’. Good old ‘botany’! It’s thriving and there are more staff than when I visited. It’s not a department as such but an important discipline in the School of Natural Sciences.

The Chair of Botany (1711) is now occupied by Professor Jennifer Mc Elwain, whose research focuses on the development and use of palaeobotanical methods (proxies) that use fossil plants to reconstruct the evolution of Earth’s atmospheric composition and climate on multimillion year timescales.

When I lectured in plant biology at The University of Birmingham between 1981 and 1991 a tutee of mine, Trevor Hodkinson, took a joint degree in biological sciences and geography. I don’t remember the dates, but he stayed on to complete his PhD supervised by one of my colleagues. He joined TCD shortly after my visit there, and has been Professor of Botany since 2016 focussing on molecular systematics, genetic resource characterisation, and endophyte biology.

So, as we sat down to a dinner of roast pork, accompanied by a delicious Reserve de Pierre Rosé 2023 from the Côtes du Rhône by winemaker Pierre Latard, all these memories came flooding back. And though, back in 1996, I was momentarily disappointed at the TCD outcome, I have no regrets about how my career turned out.

 

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Ken Brown – a life well lived

Just yesterday, I heard that an old friend of almost 50 years (who was a colleague of mine—supervisor, actually—at the International Potato Center in Lima, Peru) had died recently, just shy of his 96th birthday.

Ken Brown with potato researchers in East Africa, discussing diffuse light storage of seed tubers.

Ken Brown and I first met in February 1976 when he joined the center (known by its Spanish acronym CIP) as Coordinator for Regional Research and Training in the Outreach Program (shortly afterwards renamed Regional Research and Training).

I had returned to Peru at the end of December 1975, having just been awarded my PhD at the University of Birmingham, and was waiting for an assignment as a postdoc in Outreach (moving to Costa Rica in April 1976). My wife Steph and I were living in CIP’s guesthouse in La Molina, and as far as I can recall we were the only residents apart from the ‘wardens’, Professor Norman Thompson and his wife Shona, who were at CIP on a one-year sabbatical from a university in the USA (Michigan State I believe).

Until, one morning when we went into breakfast, and the Browns (Ken, his wife Geraldine, and five sons: Sean, James, Donal, and twins Ronan and Aidan) were already at the table, having arrived during the night.

L-R: Geraldine Brown, Steph, Josianne and Roger Cortbaoui (who joined CIP after the Browns had arrived), and Ken with Aidan on his knee.

Ken and I hit it off immediately. He had a wicked sense of humour. Throughout the years I worked alongside him, he was extremely supportive of all his staff, managing them and his program on a ‘loose rein’, never second-guessing or micro-managing. I learnt a lot about program and staff management from Ken. The Spanish term simpático sums up Ken to a tee.

Originally a cotton specialist (in plant physiology if my memory serves me correct), Ken had worked in Africa (where he met Geraldine), and immediately prior to joining CIP had been based at Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) in the Punjab region of Pakistan. He had an undergraduate degree from the University in Reading, and was awarded a PhD in 1969 after being persuaded by Professor Hugh Bunting (who held the chair in agricultural botany) to submit his publications for the degree.

In 1976 the head of the Outreach Program was American Richard ‘Dick’ Wurster. After he left CIP in 1978, Ken stepped up to become head of Regional Research. It was then that I also became CIP’s Regional Representative for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (Region II) after the previous regional leader, Ing. Oscar Hidalgo (who passed away under a month ago) left his position in Mexico to pursue PhD studies at the North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

In April 1978, Ken was a member of the team that launched a major regional program in Central America and the Caribbean, perhaps the first consortium among the centers of the CGIAR (the organization that supports a network of international agricultural centers around the world, including CIP).

Known as PRECODEPA, the program was funded by the Swiss government, and the launch meeting was held in Guatemala City.

At the launch meeting of PRECODEPA in Guatemala City. L-R around the table: Ken Brown, me, CIP Director General Richard Sawyer, CIP senior consultant John Niederhauser, Ing. Carlos Crisostomo (Guatemala), and a representative from Honduras.

In the first months at CIP, the Browns remained in the CIP guesthouse until they found a house to rent or purchase, so I got to know them very well. It was on one of our trips to one of CIP’s research stations at San Ramon that Ken and I had many hours travel to discuss a whole slew of topics.

Ken learning, for the first time, about late blight of potatoes in the field at San Ramon from plant pathologist Ing. Liliam Gutarra.

Not long after Ken arrived to Lima, there was a party at the home of CIP’s Director General, Richard Sawyer, to celebrate his birthday. Richard’s wife Norma had chosen a Roman theme for the party. And even though we were staying in the guesthouse, without easy access to costume accessories, Ken and I did our best to look the part, seen in this photo chatting (in Latin?) with Norm Thompson.

Ken remained at CIP until his retirement around 1993 when he published a short memoir: Roots and Tubers Galore: The Story of CIP’s Global Research Program and the People Who Shaped It.

In a postscript, Ken wrote: I wrote this short account of the Regional [Research] Program not just to record part of CIP’s history, but also to provide some diversion from the usual round of reports and technical publications that are always dropping on your desks. Working with the Regions is enjoyable, and I hope that those of you who did participate during the early years will find these notes of interest. As all who know me are aware, I enjoy the humorous side of life as well as the serious aspects, so if I have been too free with my memories please accept my apologies. To all of you who are part of this story I want to say thank you and wish you every success in the coming years.

I am proud to have been part of that story, and to count Ken among my friends.

However, he was perhaps too free with one memory, about an incident that happened before he even joined CIP, and of which I have no recollection whatsoever. It seems that it forms part of the CIP history.

Between 1973 and 1975, I was an Associate Taxonomist, while also completing the research for my PhD.

But as I read this, I can’t deny that it is something I would be inclined to have done. I wouldn’t put it past me.

After retiring from CIP Ken and Geraldine set up home in Devon. Geraldine sadly passed away a few years back and Ken moved to Cheltenham to live with one of the twins, Aidan and his family.

After I heard that Ken had died, I contacted Donal who I had met several times during the course of our respective careers in international agricultural development. He told me that his father had “lived life to the full until the end and while his body got weaker his mind stayed very alert. He had a very happy and fulfilling life and final years and the end was quick, peaceful and painless – what more could one ask for.”

Indeed it was a life well lived.

Thanks for everything, Ken.

Ken’s funeral was held in Salisbury, Wiltshire on Tuesday 30 July at 3 pm, where he had moved into a retirement home a year or so back.

I attended his funeral online, and asked Donal for a copy of the Order of Service, which he has given me permission to post here. Click on the image to open a copy.

Ken’s coffin was carried into the crematorium chapel by his five sons to the strains of El Condor Pasa, a very fitting choice given Ken’s many years at the helm of Regional Research and Training at CIP in Peru.

One thing I learned about Ken that I hadn’t known before was his enthusiasm for reggae music, particularly by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

The funeral service concluded with the playing of Three Little Birds by Bob Marley as everyone left the chapel.

Don’t worry about a thing
‘Cause every little thing is gonna be alright

 

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Celebrating the humble spud . . .

Not so humble really. The potato is an incredibly important crop worldwide (the fourth, after maize, rice, and wheat), with a production of 376 million metric tonnes in 2021. China is the leading producer, with 95.5 million metric tonnes, followed by India, Ukraine, Russia, and the USA.

Native to and a staple food in the Andean countries of South America, the potato spread to Spain in the 16th century [1, 2] and the rest of the world afterwards.

It’s no wonder that Peru championed the International Day of the Potato (decreed by the United Nations in December 2023 [3]) which is being celebrated today.

I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to reflect on my own journey with potatoes over 20 years in the 1970s and 1980s.

Fifty years ago (in May 1974) I had just returned to Lima after collecting potatoes for three weeks in the north of Peru (Department of Cajamarca), accompanied by my driver, Octavio.

A farmer in Cajamarca discusses his potato varieties with me, while my driver Octavio writes a collecting number on each tuber and a paper bag with a permanent marker pen.

A few months earlier, at the beginning of February, I’d travelled to Cuyo Cuyo (Department of Puno in southern Peru) to make a study of potato varieties in farmers’ fields on the ancient terraces there (below).

So what was I doing in Peru?

I’d joined the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima the previous year, in January 1973 [4] as an Associate Taxonomist while continuing with my PhD research. And I found myself, a few months later—in May—travelling with with my colleague Zosimo Huamán (right) to the northern departments of Ancash and La Libertad where, over almost a month, we collected many indigenous potato varieties—the real treasure of the Incas— that were added to CIP’s growing germplasm collection. Here are just a few examples of the incredible diversity of Andean potato varieties in that collection. Maybe I collected some of these.

Source: International Potato Center (CIP)

In October 1975, I successfully defended my PhD thesis (The evolutionary significance of the triploid cultivated potato, Solanum x chaucha Juz. et Buk.) at the University of Birmingham, where my co-supervisor, potato taxonomist and germplasm pioneer Professor Jack Hawkes (right) was head of the Department of Botany.

During my time in Lima, Dr Roger Rowe (left, then head of CIP’s Breeding and Genetics Department) was my local supervisor.

Fifty years after I first met Roger in Peru, we had a reunion on the banks of the Mississippi in Wisconsin last year.

After the University of Birmingham congregation on 12 December 1975, with Jack Hawkes on my right, and Professor Trevor Williams (who supervised my MSc dissertation in 1971) on my left.

I published three papers from my thesis. Click on any title image below (and most others throughout this post) to read the full paper.

There’s an interesting story behind the publication of this third paper from my thesis.

I originally sent a manuscript to Economic Botany, probably not long after I’d submitted the others to Euphytica.

I received an acknowledgment from Economic Botany, but then it went very quiet for at least a year.

Anyway, towards the end of 1978 or early 1979 I received—quite out of the blue—a letter from the then editor-in-chief of Euphytica, Professor AC Zeven. He told me he’d read my thesis, a copy of which had been acquired apparently by the Wageningen University library. He liked the chapter I’d written about an ethnobotanical study in Cuyo-Cuyo, and if I hadn’t submitted a paper elsewhere, he would welcome one from me.

It was about that same time I also received a further communication from the incoming editor of Economic Botany, who had found papers submitted to the journal up to 20 years previously and still waiting publication, and was I still interested in continuing with the Economic Botany submission, since he was unable to say when or if my manuscript might be considered for publication. I immediately withdrew the manuscript and, after some small revisions to fit the Euphytica style and focus, sent the manuscript to Professor Zeven. It was published in February 1980.

I returned to Lima just before the New Year 1976, knowing that CIP’s Director General, Dr Richard Sawyer (right), had already approved my transfer to CIP’s Outreach Program (later renamed Regional Research). I relocated to Costa Rica in Central America in April 1976 (living and working at the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center, CATIE in Turrialba), establishing a program to adapt potatoes to the warm humid tropics. I became leader of CIP’s regional program (or Regional Representative) in late 1977.

However, the tropical adaptation objective per se didn’t exactly endure. The potato trials were almost immediately attacked by bacterial wilt (caused by Ralstonia solaneacearum, formerly known as Pseudomonas solanacearum) even though no susceptible crops such as tomatoes had been planted on the CATIE experiment station in recent years. We subsequently discovered that the bacterium survived in a number of non-solanaceous weed hosts.

Screening for bacterial wilt resistance in CATIE’s experiment station.

I’ve posted earlier about our research on bacterial wilt and finding tolerance to the disease in a potato clone (not quite a commercial variety) known simply as Cruza 148.

Plant pathologist Professor Luis Carlos Gonzalez (right, from the University of Costa Rica in San José) and I also studied how to control the disease through a combination of tolerant varieties and soil and weed management.

We published these two papers, the first in the international journal Phytopathology, and the second in the Costarrican journal Fitopatologia.

During the late 1970s, CIP launched an initiative aimed at optimising potato productivity, jointly led by Chilean agronomist Dr Primo Accatino and US agricultural economist Dr Doug Horton. Contributing to this initiative in Costa Rica, I worked with potato farmers to reduce the excessive use of fertilizers, and fungicides to control the late blight pathogen, Phytophthora infestans. It was then (and probably remains) a common misconception among farmers that more input of fertilizer or fungicide, the better would be the outcome in terms of yield or disease control. What a fallacy! Our small project on fertilizer use was published in Agronomía Costarricense.

During the five years I spent in Costa Rica, my colleagues in the Ministerio de Agricultura y Ganadería (MAG) and I screened germplasm sent to us by CIP breeders in Lima for resistance to late blight, and common potato viruses like PVX, PVY, PLRV.

Ing. Jorge Esquivel (MAG) and me screening potatoes for virus resistance in a field trial on the slopes of the Irazú volcano in Costa Rica, while my assistants Jorge Aguilar and Moisés Pereira check plants nearby.

In 1977, Dr John Niederhauser (right, an eminent plant pathologist who had worked on late blight in Mexico for the Rockefeller Foundation before becoming an international consultant to CIP) and I worked together to develop and implement (from April 1978) a cooperative regional potato program, PRECODEPA, in six countries: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, and the Dominican Republic. Funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, SDC (and for the next 25 years or so, and expanded to more countries in the region), the network was a model for regional collaboration, with members contributing research based on their particular scientific strengths.

Clean seed tubers are one of the most important components for successful potato production, and technologies to scale up the multiplication of clean seed were contributed by CIP to PRECODEPA. My colleague from Lima, Jim Bryan (an Idaho-born seed production specialist) joined me in Costa Rica in 1979 for one year, and together we successfully developed several rapid multiplication techniques, including stem cuttings and leaf node cuttings, and producing a technical bulletin (published also in Spanish).

And we showed that it was possible to produce one tonne in a year from a single tuber. Read all about that effort here.

I can’t finish this section about my time at CIP without mentioning Dr Ken Brown (left), who was head of Regional Research.

Ken, a cotton physiologist, joined CIP in January 1976 as head of Regional Research, just at the time Steph and I returned to Lima after I’d completed my PhD. He was one of the best program managers I have worked for, keeping everything on track, but never micro-managing. I learnt a great deal from Ken about managing staff, and getting the best out of them.

At the end of November 1980, I returned to Lima expecting to be posted to the Philippines. Instead, in March 1981, I resigned from CIP and accepted a lectureship in plant biology at the University of Birmingham, continuing potato research there, as well as working on several legume species.

I look back on those formative CIP years with great appreciation: for all that I learned about potatoes and potato production, the incredible scientists from around the world I met and worked with, and the many friendships I made.

Jack Hawkes retired from the university in September 1982, having left behind his large collection of wild potatoes accumulated during several expeditions to the Americas, and a legacy of potato research on which I endeavoured to build.

You can read all about Jack’s many expeditions, view many original photos, and watch several videos dating back to 1939 by clicking on the image below.

I soon realised there were few opportunities to continue research with Jack’s collection. It was almost impossible to secure funding. But I could offer short-term projects for MSc and PhD students.

Dave Downing was the technician managing the potato collection at Birmingham.

One MSc student, Susan Juned, studied the diversity in Solanum chacoense Bitt., a wild potato species from Argentina and Paraguay, in relation to in situ conservation opportunities.

Two MSc students from Uganda, Beatrice Male-Kayiwa and Nelson Wanyera evaluated resistance to potato cyst nematode (Globodera pallida) in wild potatoes from Bolivia. We asked Jack Hawkes to advise on the choice of germplasm to include, since he had made the collections in that country in the 1970s. Beatrice and Nelson worked at Rothamsted Experiment Station (now Rothamsted Research) in Hertfordshire with the late Dr Alan Stone.

Two PhD students, Lynne Woodwards and Ian Gubb, studied the lack of enzymic browning (potatoes turn brown when they are cut) in wild potatoes, Series Longipedicellata Buk., and one tetraploid (2n=4x=48 chromosomes) species from Mexico in particular, Solanum hjertingii Hawkes, and their crossability with cultivated potatoes. Ian’s studentship (co-supervised at Birmingham by Professor Jim Callow) involved a collaboration with the Institute of Food Research (now Quadram Institute Bioscience) in Norwich, where his co-supervisor was Dr JC Hughes.

Gene editing has recently successfully produced non-browning potatoes. Wide crossing is probably no longer needed.

I had two PhD students from Peru, René Chavez and Carlos Arbizu, who carried out their research at CIP (like I had in the early 1970s) and only came back to Birmingham to complete their residency requirements and defend their theses, although I visited them in Lima several times during their research.

René evaluated the breeding potential of wild species of potato for resistance to potato cyst nematodes and tuber moth, publishing three excellent papers from his thesis The use of wide crosses in potato breeding, submitted in 1984.

Carlos submitted his thesis, The use of Solanum acaule as a source of resistance to potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTV) and potato leaf roll virus (PLRV), in 1990. He never published any papers from his research, returning to Lima to work at CIP for a few years on Andean minor tuber crops, before setting himself up as a major avocado producer in Peru.

Denise Clugston (co-supervised by Professor Brian Ford-Lloyd) defended her thesis, Embryo culture and protoplast fusion for the introduction of Mexican wild species germplasm into the cultivated potato in 1988. She left biology almost immediately, and regrettably never did write any papers, although she did present this work at a conference held in Cambridge.

Another PhD student, Elizabeth Newton, worked on sexually-transmitted potato viruses of quarantine significance in the UK, in collaboration with one of my former colleagues at CIP, Dr Roger Jones who had returned to the UK and was working for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) at the Harpenden Laboratory. In 1989 she successfully submitted her thesis, Studies towards the control of viruses transmitted through true potato seed but never published any papers, only presenting this one at a conference in Warwick in 1986.

Because of the quarantine restrictions imposed on the Hawkes collection, I took the decision (with Jack’s blessing) to donate it to the Commonwealth Potato Collection in Dundee. Once the collection was gone, we had other opportunities for potato research at Birmingham.

In the late 1980s, my colleague Brian Ford-Lloyd (right) and I ran a project, funded by KP Agriculture (and managed by my former CIP colleague, Dr John Vessey) to generate somaclonal lines resistant to low temperature sweetening of the crisping var. Record .

My former MSc student Susan Juned (right) was hired as a Research Associate.

We began the project with a batch of 170 Record tubers, uniquely numbering each one and keeping the identity of all somaclones derived from each tuber. And there were some interesting results (and an unexpected response from the media [5]).

Did the project meet its objectives? Well, this is what John later told us:

The project was successful in that it produced Record somaclones with lower reducing sugars in the tubers, but unsuccessful in that none entered commercial production . . . Shortly after the end of the project, Record was replaced by a superior variety, Saturna. 

The project very clearly showed the potential of somaclones but also emphasised that it needs to be combined with conventional breeding . . . Other important aspects were the demonstration that the commercial seed potato lines available were not genetically identical, as previously thought, and that regeneration of clones from single cells had to be as rapid as possible to avoid unwanted somaclonal variation. 

The majority of somaclones were derived from just a few of the 170 tubers, each potentially (and quite unexpectedly) a different Record clone. We suggested that the differential regeneration ability was due to genetic differences between tubers as it was found to be maintained in subsequent tuber generations. Furthermore, this would have major implications for seed potato production specifically and, more generally, for in vitro genetic conservation of vegetatively-propagated species.

Sue completed her PhD, Somaclonal variation in the potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) cultivar Record with particular reference to the reducing sugar variation after cold storage in 1994 after I’d already left Birmingham for the Philippines.

After leaving the university, Sue became a very successful local politician, even running in one General Election as a Liberal Democrat candidate for Parliament. Sue is now Leader of Stratford-on-Avon District Council.

From 1984, I had a project to work on true potato seed (or TPS) in collaboration with CIP, funded by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA, a UK government agency that eventually became the Department for International Development or DfID, but now fully subsumed into the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office).

For many reasons, this project was not a success. Let me explain.

At the end of the 1970s CIP launched a project to use TPS as an alternative production approach to seed potatoes (i.e., tubers). But the use of TPS is not without its challenges.

Potato genetics are complex because most cultivated potatoes are polyploid, actually tetraploid with 48 chromosomes. And although self compatible, and producing copious quantities of TPS through self pollination, the progeny are highly variable. My approach was to produce uniform or homozygous diploid (with 24 chromosomes) inbred lines. The only obstacle being that diploid potatoes are self incompatible. We aimed to overcome that obstacle. There were precedents, albeit from a species in a totally unrelated plant family but with a similar incompatibility genetic base.

One of my colleagues at Birmingham, geneticist Dr Mike Lawrence spent many years working on field poppy (Papaver rhoeas) and, through persistent selfing, had manage to break its strong self incompatibility. We believed that a similar approach using single seed descent might yield dividends in diploid potatoes. Well, at least ODA felt it was worth a try, and the project had CIP’s backing (although not enthusiastically from the leading breeder there at the time). However, in the light of subsequent research, I think we have been vindicated in taking this particular approach.

Because of quarantine restrictions at Birmingham that I already mentioned, we negotiated an agreement with the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) in Cambridge to base the project there, building a bespoke glasshouse for the research. My counterpart at PBI was the head of potato breeding, Dr Alan J Thomson. We hired a postdoc, recently graduated with a PhD from the University of St Andrews, who came with glowing references.

We set out our perspectives on inbreeding at a CIP planning conference in Lima.

I further elaborated on these perspectives in a book chapter (published in 1987) based on a paper I presented at a joint meeting of EAPR and EUCARPIA at King’s College, Cambridge, in December 1985.

Ultimately the project did not meet its main objective. We encountered three problems, even though making progress in the first three years:

  1. By year five, we really did hit a ‘biological brick wall’, and couldn’t break the self incompatibility. We decided to pull the plug, so-to-speak, one year before the end of the project. It was a hard decision to make, but I think we were being honest rather than consuming the remaining financial resources for the sake of completing the project cycle.
  2. We lost momentum in the project after three years when Margaret Thatcher’s government privatised the PBI, and we had to relocate the project to the university campus in Birmingham (having disposed of the wild potato collection to the CPC as I mentioned earlier). And then build new glasshouse facilities to support the project.
  3. As the lead investigator, I was not successful in encouraging our postdoc to communicate more readily and openly. That lack of open communication did not help us make the best strategic decisions. And I take responsibility for that. However, on reflection, I think that her appointment to this pioneering project was not the best decision that Alan and I made.

Looking at the progress in diploid breeding since, it’s quite ironic really because several breeders published a call in 2016 to reinvent the potato as a diploid inbred line-based crop, just as we proposed in the 1980s. Our publications have been consistently overlooked.

Inbreeding in diploids became possible because of the discovery of a self compatibility gene, Sli, in the wild species Solanum chacoense after selfing over seven generations. With that breakthrough, such an inbreeding approach had become a reality. Pity that we were not able to break self incompatibility in cultivated diploid potatoes ourselves. And there’s no doubt that advances in molecular genetics and genomics since the 1980s have significantly opened up and advanced this particular breeding strategy.

Around 1988, I was invited by CIP to join three other team members (a program manager, an agronomist, and an economist) to review a seed production project, funded by the SDC [6], in Peru. I believe Ken Brown had suggested me as the seed production technical expert.

L-R: Peruvian agronomist, me, Cesar Vittorelli (CIP review manager), Swiss economist, and Carlos Valverde (program manager and team leader).

I flew to Lima, and we spent the next three weeks visiting sites in La Molina (next to CIP headquarters), in Huancayo in the central Andes, Cuzco in the south of Peru, and Cajamarca in the north.

That consultancy taught me a lot about program reviews and would stand me in good stead later on in my career. Once we had submitted our report, I returned to the UK, and a couple of weeks later spent a few days in Bern at the headquarters of the SDC for a debriefing session.

We found the project had been remarkably successful, making an impact in its operational areas, and we recommended a second phase, which the SDC accepted. Unfortunately, events in Peru overtook the project, as the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) guerrilla movement was on the ascendancy and it became too dangerous to move around the country.

After Jack Hawkes retired in 1982, he and I would meet up for lunch and a beer at least once a week to chat about our common interests in genetic resources conservation, and potatoes in particular. Out of those discussions came a couple of theoretical papers.

The Endosperm Balance Number (or EBN) hypothesis had been proposed to explain the crossability between tuber-bearing Solanum species (there are over 150 wild species of potato). We wrote this paper to combine the taxonomic classification of the different species and their EBNs.

In 1987, Jack asked me to contribute a paper to a symposium he was organizing with Professor David Harris of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London to celebrate the centenary of one of my scientific heroes, Russian geneticist and acclaimed as the Father of Plant Genetic Resources, Nikolai Vavilov. I conceptualized how Vavilov’s Law of Homologous Series could be applied to potatoes.

By the end of the 1990s, I was already looking for scientific pastures new – in rice! And in early 1991, I accepted a position at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, and my research focus moved from potatoes to rice.

What surprises me is that some of my potato work endures, and I regularly receive citations of several of my papers, the last of which was published more than 30 years ago.

With the announcement of the International Day of the Potato, it certainly has brought back many memories of the couple of decades I enjoyed working on this fascinating crop.

[1] Hawkes, JG  and J Francisco-Ortega (1992). The potato in Spain during the Late 16th Century. Economic Botany 46: 86-97.

[2] Hawkes, JG and J Francisco-Ortega (1993). The early history of the potato in Europe. Euphytica 70: 1-7.

[3] The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) today welcomed the UN’s decision to designate 30 May as International Day of Potato, an opportunity to raise awareness of a crop regularly consumed by billions of people and of global importance for food security and nutrition.

The annual observance was championed by Peru, which submitted a proposal for adoption to the UN General Assembly based on an FAO Conference Resolution of July 7, 2023. The impetus for the Day, which builds upon the International Year of Potato that was observed in 2008, originates from the need to emphasize the significant role of the potato in tackling prevalent global issues, such as food insecurity, poverty and environmental threats.

[4] Steph joined me in Lima in July 1973 and we were married there in October. John Vessey and his wife Marian were our witnesses.

In November 1972, a couple of months after she had graduated with an MSc in genetic resources conservation from the University of Birmingham (where we met), Steph joined the Scottish Plant Breeding Station in Edinburgh as Assistant Curator of the Commonwealth Potato Collection. At CIP, she was an Associate Geneticist responsible for the day-to-day management of the institute’s potato germplasm collection.

Steph in one of CIP’s screenhouses at La Molina.

[5] In 1987, we wrote a piece about the somaclone project for the University of Birmingham internal research bulletin. This was picked up by several media, including the BBC and I was invited to appear on a breakfast TV show. Until, that is, the producer realised that the project was a serious piece of research.

One of the tabloid newspapers, The Sun, was less forgiving, and ran a brief paragraph on page 3 (Crunch time for boffins) alongside the daily well-endowed young lady. Click on the image to enlarge.

[6] The seed project was my second contact with the SDC (after PRECODEPA). After I joined IRRI in 1991, the SDC funded a five year project from 1995 to rescue rice biodiversity, among other objectives. I have written about that project here.

 

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The wonder of Cambodia’s temples

You’ve probably never heard of Jayavarman VII (right).

Born around 1122/25, he is widely regarded as one of the most powerful of Khmer monarchs, and ruled the vast Khmer Empire between 1181 and 1218. He was the first Khmer king to fully embrace Buddhism (earlier kings had been Hindu).

The empire was founded at the beginning of the 9th century, and at its zenith in the 12th century had subjugated much of Southeast Asia. By the middle of the 15th century however it had disappeared. All the temples and surrounding buildings were reclaimed by the jungle, and not uncovered again until the 19th century, mainly by French archaeologists. Archaeology is thriving in Cambodia today, and new discoveries are being made.

Southeast Asia circa 900 CE, showing the Khmer Empire in red.

At the heart of the empire was the capital, Angkor, with its principal temple Angkor Wat, now one of the most visited heritage sites worldwide. Angkor Wat features on the national flag of Cambodia.

Steph and I (with our younger daughter Philippa) had the privilege of visiting Angkor Wat in December 2000.

Angkor Wat was actually built by Suryavarman II (ruled 1113– c.1150) as a Hindu temple, and took almost 30 years to construct. Under Jayavarman II, it gradually became a Buddhist one. The king was also responsible for one of the most beautiful temples, Bayon (below), at Angkor.

And he established an impressive network of more than 100 hospitals throughout his empire, and other temples and cities that are now only being intensively studied in the northwest of Cambodia close to the frontier with Thailand.

Last Saturday Steph and I watched (on Channel 4) the third and final part of Lost Temples of Cambodia, fronted by British archaeologist Pauline Carroll (about whom I can find no information other than she worked on the dig in Leicester that discovered the remains of King Richard III in 2012). Click on the image below to access each of the programs.

Filmed at Angkor Wat and other close-by sites, the programs also explored newly-discovered sites to the north west close to the frontier with Thailand. And, as with Angkor Wat, the temples at Banteay Chhmar (and another recently-discovered a short distance away at Banteay Toap) are revealing much about the king who built them.

As we watched the programs, it was hard not to pinch ourselves that we had been so lucky to have visited Angkor Wat before it became overrun with tourists. We had flown to Siem Reap from the Philippines (where I was working at the International Rice Research Institute) via Singapore on Silk Air, and spent three nights there. Which gave us two full days to explore the many Angkor sites and take a boat ride on the large lake nearby, the Tonlé Sap.

Just click on each of the icons on the Angkor map below to explore a photo album for each, and zoom out to see the location of other sites in the northwest of Cambodia that were featured in the Channel 4 programs.

We didn’t join any tour to explore Angkor. Through one of my IRRI colleagues based in Phnom Penh we arranged for a driver to pick us up at the airport, and then stay with us over the next two and a half days. Once we had toured one of the sites, the driver quickly whisked us off to the next, finding the best locations to start from. Such as at Banteay Kdei (photo album), where he dropped us at one entrance, and picking us up on the far side of the site once we had walked through at our own pace, and not one dictated by any tour guide.

Even at Angkor Wat itself it’s quite remarkable how many photos I was able to take with only a smattering (if any) of other tourists (photo album).

As we watched the TV programs, it brought back to us how beautiful are the many bas-reliefs and stone carvings in general through the Angkor complex. Absolutely exquisite! And to some extent, those at Banteay Chhmar and Banteay Toap (more recent than Angkor Wat although constructed by Jayavarman II) are even finer.

Here is just a small selection of those we saw.

Taking the Angkor complex in total (and the many other sites across Cambodia) the construction of temples and other buildings would have required millions of tons of sandstone that had to be quarried some distance away and transported to the sites.

The stone came from Phnom Kulen, a range of hills to the northeast of Angkor Wat by about 30 miles. A series of canals was constructed to float the millions of stone blocks to the construction sites, on rafts pulled by elephants. Evidence for the canals was first gleaned from satellite images, and verified at ground level.

The construction must have involved a very large population. It has been estimated that perhaps as many 1 million people lived at Angkor, making it one of the largest cities in the ancient world. And they would have to be fed. But on what? Rice, of course, and that crop remains the staple in Cambodia today, thriving in the hot humid lowland climate, even in seasonally deep-water sites.

Eventually the Khmer Empire declined. Was it due to overpopulation, climate change affecting agricultural productivity, or warfare both internal and foreign? Certainly the Khmer faced threats and invasion from Thailand and Vietnam. Probably it was a combination of many factors.

But as new sites are discovered and recovered from the jungle, the history of this once thriving empire is being revealed in ever more detail.

There were a few things that caught my attention in the three program series on Channel 4.

I mentioned that Pauline Carroll was an unknown entity before now. And yet, she didn’t ‘front’ the series in quite the way you might expect in such programs. There was a background narrative, from restaurateur and presenter of The Great British Bake Off, Prue Leith. What a strange choice as narrator! Instead, Pauline Carroll was left to wander around the various sites, ask a few questions of local archaeologists, and occasionally speak to camera.

Second, as with many documentary programs nowadays, considerable use was made of drones to capture aerial shots, which certainly enhanced appreciation of the scope and scale of Angkor Wat and the other sites. In the past, such aerial photography would have required helicopters, but even low-cost drones can provide high quality output, and reaching areas inaccessible to helicopters.

And the final point I would like to make is about the healthy state, it seems, of Cambodian archaeology. Pauline Carroll met and spoke with several knowledgeable Cambodian archaeologists who have taken on the role of revealing their nation’s cultural history. And this is even more remarkable and encouraging considering it’s not that many decades since the appalling Cambodian genocide perpetrated by the murderous regime of Pol Pot in the 1970s, when millions of lives were sacrificed, particularly from the intelligentsia.

 

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Klaus Lampe, IRRI’s fifth Director General, passes away at 92

Dr Klaus J Lampe was the Director General of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines, serving one term from 1988 to 1995. He succeeded Professor MS Swaminathan as Director General.

Yesterday we heard the sad news that he had passed away in hospital in Germany on 6 February, aged 92.

Born in Freiburg in 1931, Klaus Lampe grew up in Nazi Germany, and he once described to me the horror of escaping the fire storm following Allied bombing.

He was an agricultural engineer, spending time in Afghanistan from 1965 to 1968, and thereafter he held various agricultural development aid positions back home in West Germany.

His appointment at IRRI in 1988 was the beginning of the institute’s renewal. Just shy of its 30th anniversary the institute was beginning to show its age. Its infrastructure was in dire need of refurbishment and enlargement to allow the institute to address several new research challenges, particularly in the areas of biotechnology and molecular biology.

And with a mandate to revitalise IRRI’s research strategy and program, Klaus adopted a matrix management system (alluded to in this post) with five research programs setting the specific research agenda on one side of the matrix and divisions (the organizational units where research was carried out) on the other.

He encouraged several long-term staff to retire or seek pastures new, and set about recruiting a new (and younger) cohort of staff. I was part of that recruitment, as head of the newly-formed Genetic Resources Center (GRC), with special responsibility for the genebank.

Meeting Dr Lampe and his wife, Annemarie, at an IRRI reception shortly after my arrival at IRRI in July 1991.

In addition to the innovative management that brought focus to IRRI’s research and refurbishment of the institute’s buildings, Klaus’s other achievements included his sincere engagement (not always successful) with suspicious NGOs in the Philippines and more widely across Asia as IRRI developed its biotechnology agenda (supported by the Rockefeller Foundation), and the adoption of new rice breeding objectives, particularly the so-called New Plant Type and hybrid rice. Certainly IRRI began to feel like a re-energised institute.

Klaus Lampe with US Ambassador to the Philippines, Frank G Wisner, Gurdev Khush, principal plant breeder, and agronomist Ken Cassman, discussing the ‘New Plant Type’.

When I interviewed for the GRC position (in January 1991), Klaus and I had a long discussion about the changes that he felt were needed to upgrade the genebank, known then as the International Rice Germplasm Center (IRGC), and how to integrate the operations of the International Network for Genetic Evaluation of Rice (INGER) and the Seed Health Unit into GRC. By the time of my arrival in Los Baños, it had been decided to retain the Seed Health Unit as an independent entity outside GRC.

I explained how important research on germplasm conservation and use was, and that I expected, if appointed, to add a research string to the activities of GRC. That had not been envisaged when IRRI advertised the GRC position in September 1990.

Once in post, Klaus supported my research plans for the genebank. I also pushed enthusiastically that the genebank should benefit substantially from the investment being made in the refurbishment around the institute. After all, I chided him, if the genebank was the jewel in IRRI’s crown, so to speak, it was only fair that management and Board of Trustees approved that investment. And he agreed.

We made major changes, adding a bespoke seed drying room, and reconfiguring many of the genebank facilities to increase the efficiency of genebank operations and bring them up to international standards. I was permitted to increase the number of staff to tackle the significant backlog of processing seeds for long-term conservation. And the majority of the staff positions were upgraded to reflect their increased responsibilities.

With Klaus’s support and commitment I was able to significantly enhance the genebank operations such that, in an external review around 1994, the genebank was described as a model for others to emulate. And for that I will remain forever grateful to him.

I had first come across Klaus Lampe in the summer of 1989 (maybe 1990). I was lecturing at the University of Birmingham, and had no intention then (or inkling even) of leaving, or that Klaus would  soon be my boss.

I was visiting Dr Jaap Hardon, head of the Dutch genebank (Centre for Genetic Resources, the Netherlands or CGN) in Wageningen. He invited me to attend a special university seminar one afternoon with guest speakers from two centers of the Consultative Group on International Agriculture or CGIAR: the Director General (I don’t remember his name) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington, DC, and Dr Klaus Lampe from IRRI.

Klaus was not a tall man, but he certainly stood out in a crowd, with his long flowing grey hair. Which reminds me of a story that former Chair of IRRI’s Board of Trustees, Dr Walter ‘Wally’ P Falcon recounted during his last report to the institute’s staff before he stepped down from the Board in the early 1990s.

Klaus and Wally Falcon at a meeting of IRRI’s Board of Trustees.

Although a member of the Board of Trustees when Klaus was appointed as Director General, Wally was not a member of the appointment committee, and did not meet Klaus until the next Board meeting. As Wally told it, he saw this man walking towards him, hair standing out, and he immediately thought, My God, they’ve appointed Beethoven!

Klaus, always supported by Annemarie (who predeceased him a few years back) encouraged visitors to IRRI, especially VIPs, and he was never short of a few words to say at the frequent receptions held at the IRRI Guest House.

Klaus and Annemarie at the despedida for Dr Ernie Nunn, IRRI’s Director for Operations and his wife (next to Annemarie).

One of the first VIP visitors I had to show around the genebank was Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand, in 1991, not long after I arrived in Los Baños.


One of my colleagues, Dr Bob Zeigler, a plant pathologist from CIAT in Colombia was appointed Program Leader for Rainfed Lowland Rice at the end of 1991. Bob became IRRI’s 9th Director General in 2005.

DG5 and DG9 together in 1991.

Klaus was a complex man. Exceedingly kind on the one hand, but he could be quite ruthless, and a number of staff fell foul of his displeasure, me included. So when he left IRRI in 1995, we didn’t exactly part the best of friends, although for much of the time we worked together, I had an excellent relationship with him.

I didn’t meet him again until early 2010 when he returned to IRRI to attend some of the institute’s 50th anniversary celebrations. I can’t say I was particularly keen to meet him again. But we did, and during one reception he approached me, taking me by the arm and steering me to a quiet corner of the room. Whereupon he apologized for how he had behaved towards me 15 years previously. We parted on good terms, and that’s exactly how I will remember him.

My former colleague Gene Hettel interviewed Klaus for his series of Pioneer Interviews, who spoke at length on the challenges he saw IRRI facing. Here’s a snippet from that interview.

Gene has also today published this obituary on the IRRI website.

 

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Let the mystery be . . .

Until quite recently, I’d never heard of American singer-songwriter Iris DeMent. I’ve since become quite obsessed with her music. She has quite an extraordinary voice, and a rare song-writing talent.

One evening, Steph and I were watching a compilation of programs from Transatlantic Sessions (on BBC Scotland via the BBC IPlayer), and Iris DeMent was featured from Series 1, Program 3, first broadcast in 1995.

Singing one of her own compositions, Let the Mystery Be, she was accompanied by members of the Transatlantic Sessions house band: American fiddle player Jay Ungar (composer of the well-known Ashokan Farewell), guitarist Russ Barenberg, mandola player Dónal Lunny, and accordionist Phil Cunningham. I believe the female bassist was Molly Mason.

She appeared on Transatlantic Sessions in the very first program (and the first featured performance) accompanying Emmylou Harris (whose music I came to appreciate in her collaboration with Mark Knopfler on the 2006 album, All the Roadrunning) on Wheels of Love, along with Irish singer Mary Black.

DeMent was born in 1961 in Paragould in northeast Arkansas, the youngest of 14 children, and now lives in rural southeast Iowa. Her music is a blend of folk, country, and gospel, often with a political theme. She has often dueted with folk-country singer-songwriter John Prine.

In Transatlantic Sessions Series 1, Program 4 DeMent sang one of her best compositions, Our Town, about one of her enduring themes: small-town America. Shetland fiddle virtuoso Aly Bain also figures in this version, as does a young dobro player Jerry Douglas (who would go on to co-host Transatlantic Sessions with Aly Bain in Series 2 to 6 between 1998 and 2013).

Here is another great song from Series 1, Program 6.

I did wonder whether DeMent had ever appeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion, from the Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul, Minnesota, believing that her music was just the genre to feature in the show. I found this reference to an appearance from 2 November 2002. You can hear her singing at 14′:22″ and another composition, Mama’s Opry, at 51′:42″. Garrison Keillor said that DeMent was one of his favorite singers, whose songs he had performed many times.

Here is DeMent singing Mama’s Opry with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and Matraca Berg (performed at the Grand Ole Opry?)

So what about Transatlantic Sessions? In my opinion, it was one of the best series to be broadcast from BBC Scotland. And as Aly Bain says by way of introduction, it brought together ‘. . . some of the best musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. No audience. Just the music‘.

We came late to the series, seeing Series 5 and 6 in 2011 and 2013 respectively, the previous four having been broadcast while we were living in the Philippines during the 1990s and 2000s. But since then, BBC Scotland has rebroadcast some compilations, hosted by North Uist singer Julie Fowlis and Irish singer Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh.

What a delight the programs were, and such talent on display – the best of Scottish, Irish and American music. Here’s a link to many of the videos from all six series. Enjoy!

 

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“One must be willing to release one’s mind and soul from one’s body to achieve ecstasy through music” (Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan)

As I wrote way back in February 2012 not long after I launched this blog, I have broad tastes in music: rock, pop, folk, country & western, classical (particularly Baroque and Chopin). There’s always music in our house, all hours of the day. And my listening experience has improved since I added an Echo Dot 5th generation to my office at Christmas.

Anyway, I was looking through my CD collection the other day (yes, I still hold on to more than 200 CDs although I play them much less frequently now since having access to streaming services like Spotify), and came across one that that took me right back to the 1980s.

I don’t remember why I happened to be home alone on that particular weekend afternoon. I’d switched on the TV and was surfing the small number of channels available then. I came across a program on the BBC aimed at its Asian audience. It was a concert by qawwali virtuoso Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from Pakistan.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948-1997)

And only intending to check what was on each channel, I became immediately mesmerised by his performance with his backing singers, and watched the whole program.

One song in particular, Yeh Jo Halka Halka, caught my attention. It lasted over 18 minutes!

Here is that song, recorded in Birmingham in 1985:

And this is the version from the CD:

This is the English translation. Just click on the image for an enlarged version.

It made quite an impression on me, and I find myself returning to it from time-to-time.

Suffering from ill health (he weighed over 300 pounds or 137 kg) he travelled to London for treatment in August 1997, but suffered cardiac arrest just after arriving in the country.

His legacy is continued by family members.

 

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Memories of Russian geneticist Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887-1943)

A recent article brought to mind what I learned about Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (left) when I was a student, and also conversations I had with two eminent scientists who actually met Vavilov in Leningrad more than 80 years ago.

Vavilov was a brilliant geneticist, whose story the whole world deserves to know. The Crop Trust has just launched a new web series, Seed Heroes, with this first story, Nikolai Vavilov: The Father of Genebanks.

Surprisingly, as an undergraduate student studying botany in the late 1960s, I never heard anything about Vavilov or his pioneering work. In retrospect, I’m of the firm opinion that he should be part of every plant sciences or genetics degree curriculum. He was such a colossus, and one of my science heroes, about whom I have written or referred to in many blog posts.

It was only when I began a one-year MSc course on the Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources at the University of Birmingham in September 1970 that I became acquainted with Vavilov and what he achieved to collect and study different varieties of crop plants from more than 100 countries. All with the aim of using the varieties—or genetic resources as we now can describe them—to breed new crops and make Soviet agriculture more resilient. Indeed, Vavilov is often referred to as the father of plant genetic resources, and correctly so, nevermind father of genebanks.

Vavilov was highly respected in the West, and he visited the UK spending time in the early years of the last century at the John Innes Horticultural Institution near London. His study of crop variation also opened new perspectives on the nature and distribution of genetic diversity in crop plants and their wild relatives, and where crops were domesticated thousands of years ago.

What would Vavilov have gone on to achieve had he not fallen foul of Stalin’s Soviet regime and his nemesis, Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, dying of starvation in prison in Saratov in 1943 at the age of 55?

So, what was Vavilov like as a man and scientist? Having spoken at length with Professor Jack Hawkes and Dr John Niederhauser about their visits to Russia in the 1930s, and meeting Vavilov, I almost feel that I knew him myself, albeit vicariously.

Jack Hawkes (right, 1915-2007), a potato taxonomist and head of the Department of Botany at the University of Birmingham founded the genetic resources MSc course there in 1969. Jack was also the co-supervisor (with Dr Roger Rowe of the International Potato Center in Peru) of my PhD research and dissertation.

In 1937, having just graduated from the University of Cambridge, Jack applied for an assistant’s position to join Dr PS Hudson, Director of the Imperial Bureau of Plant Breeding and Genetics in Cambridge, on an expedition to Lake Titicaca in the South American Andes to collect wild and cultivated potatoes. That expedition was delayed, and it wasn’t until early January 1939, under a new expedition leader, that Jack finally found himself in South America. The germplasm that was collected—from Argentina in the south to Venezuela in the north of the continent—became the founding accessions of what is now known as the Commonwealth Potato Collection.

You can read all about the Empire Potato Collecting Expedition to South America on this website (and view films that Jack made more than 80 years ago) based on Jack’s expedition notes and a 2003 memoir of the expedition, which he titled Hunting the Wild Potato in the South American Andes.

In Chapter 1 of that memoir, Jack describes at length the two week visit he made to Russia to meet with potato experts SM Bukasov, VS Juzepczuk, and VS Lechnovicz, to understand more about potato diversity (he’d never worked on potatoes until then), and discuss where and when to collect in South America since the Russians had already made collections there.

Jack writes that the visit to Leningrad was an experience that changed [his] life in many ways. He never forgot the kindness shown to him, a young man of only 23, by Vavilov and his colleagues.

Arriving in Leningrad on 26 August (or thereabouts), he first met Professor Bukasov, and almost immediately that same afternoon he was taken to the Lenin Academy of Sciences to meet Vavilov. Jack was invited to Vavilov’s apartment in Leningrad and his house in Moscow. They visited research stations together, and Vavilov even took Jack to the opera in Leningrad.

They discussed Vavilov’s ideas on the origin of crop plants and his theory of centers of diversity, his ‘Law of Homologous Series’ (which I applied in a paper on potatoes I presented at a Vavilov Centenary Symposium in 1987), the Russian system of potato taxonomy (which Jack initially used but found it over-complicated), and comparisons of British and Soviet agriculture.

They couldn’t avoid discussing Lysenko and his strong rejection of Mendelian genetics. Vavilov acknowledged Lysenko’s good work on wheat vernalization, and did not seem upset at Lysenko’s rejection of [Vavilov’s] results. Inevitably Jack and Lysenko crossed paths. Jack found him a dangerous, bigoted personality, entirely wrapped up in his own ideas. He was a . . . wholly repellent person. He was a politician rather than a scientist, and very much able to ingratiate himself with the communist politicians in Moscow. Here was, they thought, a Soviet man, born an unlettered peasant and now the sort of “first class” scientist that the communist system had created.

By 1938, Lysenko was in the ascendance, and obtaining more money for his work than Vavilov. In 1940, Vavilov was arrested and sent to prison on a trumped-up charge, and died there three years later, apparently of starvation. Ironic really, given that Vavilov had devoted his life to making agriculture more sustainable and increase crop productivity with the aim of defeating famine.

After he retired from Birmingham in 1982 (I had been appointed lecturer in plant biology the year before), Jack and I would often meet for lunch and a beer, and he would tell me all about that visit to Russia and meeting Vavilov. He said it had been  a great experience, and still couldn’t quite believe that Vavilov, a world-famous scientist, had treated him, a young man embarking on his scientific adventure, as an honored guest.

Jack’s lasting impression of Vavilov (who he admired immensely)  more than 60 years later was a large, jovial, hospitable and friendly person, putting [Jack] at ease and talking to [him] as an equal about his work and that of his colleagues.

I first met John Niederhauser (left, 1916-2005) in the early 1970s when I was an Associate Taxonomist at the recently-founded International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, Peru and he was a consultant/advisor to CIP’s Director General, Dr Richard Sawyer.

John was the 1990 World Food Prize Laureate. A plant pathologist, he spent much of his career as a member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s agriculture program in Mexico (where his colleague in the wheat program was Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Laureate in 1970), and researching resistance to the late blight pathogen of potatoes, Phytophthora infestans, the cause of the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s.

In 1976, I had moved to Costa Rica and by 1977 I had been appointed CIP’s regional representative covering Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. About then, John’s and my paths crossed again, and we worked closely together for a year to design and launch a regional potato program, PRECODEPA, in six countries (later expanded to several more countries, and funded by the Swiss government for at least 25 years).

John and I traveled frequently together to those initial six countries, spending hours in airports and on the various flights, so had ample opportunity to really get to know one another.

He had been brought up on a farm in Washington state, but at the age of 17 in 1934 he bought himself a ticket to travel to Russia (I subsequently learned he had relatives there). So why choose Russia? Well, as John recounted the story, he had gone to a travel agent in San Francisco, and asked how far he could travel on his available funds. A return ticket to Leningrad was the outcome.

It seems that he and Vavilov met quite by chance. John had been visiting a botanical garden in Moscow, when a gentleman stopped and asked (in English) who he was and where he had come from. It was Nikolai Vavilov, of course. Well, the outcome (based apparently in part on John’s self-declared knowledge of tractor mechanics) was that Vavilov offered him a summer job on a state farm in the Ukraine where important germplasm collections were being multiplied. I’ve subsequently learnt that John spent an academic year in Moscow, all at the behest of Vavilov, before moving to Cornell University, where he also obtained his PhD in 1943 (the year of Vavilov’s death).

And like Jack Hawkes, John was full of admiration for Vavilov. He said that meeting him had changed the course of his life.

In the field of conservation and use of plant genetic resources, Vavilov is a giant. His scientific ideas about crop diversity have mainly stood the test of time. The collections he made are still held in the genebank that now bears his name. And his descriptions of crop diversity (I’ll never forget those of the rosaceous tree fruit forests—apples, pears and the like—in the mountain foothills of Kazakhstan), have inspired later generations of germplasm scientists, me in particular. As an MSc student, I wrote a dissertation on the origin of lentils, Lens culinaris. One of the major publications I had to consult was a monograph by Russian scientist Elena Barulina, Vavilov’s second wife.

Again I find myself wondering just what else Vavilov might have achieved had the Soviet regime never persecuted him so cruelly.

 

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A final commission . . .

Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726)

Among the pantheon of English architects of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Sir John Vanbrugh (dramatist, herald, and fervent Whig) is surely one of the most extraordinary since he never—apparently—received any formal training. His commissions included Castle Howard (for the Earl of Carlisle, in 1699) in North Yorkshire, and Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire for John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in 1705.

Perhaps his most elegant—and final—commission was Seaton Delaval Hall (on a much smaller scale than either Castle Howard or Blenheim), designed for Vice-Admiral George Delaval and begun in 1718. Both Delaval and Vanbrugh died before the house was completed.

The Hall stands between the small communities of Seaton Delaval and Seaton Sluice in Northumberland, and just under 10 miles (as the crow flies) northeast from the center of Newcastle upon Tyne. It’s only six miles by road from our home in North Tyneside, and is our nearest National Trust property.

Admiral Delaval purchased the estate from an impoverished cousin, but the family had owned land in this area since the Norman Conquest in the 11th century. Seaton Delaval Hall has had an interesting history and was occupied by various branches of the extravagant Delaval family. In 1822 there was a catastrophic fire which gutted the central main block, which has remained derelict ever since. Now a Grade 1 listed house, it is owned by the National Trust.

Like Blenheim and Castle Howard, Seaton Delaval Hall reflects Vanbrugh’s baroque design penchant for buildings with symmetrical wings on either side of a central block.

Here are three aerial images of the Hall taken recently (courtesy of local photographer John Fatkin [1]) that brilliantly show this symmetry.

The north entrance of Seaton Delaval Hall, with the grand stables block on the left (east) side, and accommodation on the right (west). Courtesy of John Fatkin – Coastal Portraits.

The Hall from the east.

The grand South Portico, with the gardens to the left.

The Hall stands within an area of just under 8 hectares, and is surrounded by a 2m high Ha-Ha wall, 360 x 220m, with rounded bastions at each of the four corners. These bastions each had a statue on a pedestal, but these have been removed to other parts of the garden. The Church of Our Lady (originally Saxon) lies within the Ha-Ha wall, and was the private chapel of the Delaval family (in the trees in the bottom left corner of the photo below).

Just to the west of the South Portico there is a small formal garden, and beyond that a magnificent parterre that must be at least 50m, if not longer. The grounds have undergone extensive renovation in recent years.

The main entrance to Seaton Delaval Hall is through the gates off the Seaton Delaval-Seaton Sluice road, the A190, round to the car park on the east side. It’s then a short walk to the South Portico, with its magnificent ionic columns.

The entrance from the north courtyard.
The east wing stable block.
The west wing from the north entrance.
The south portico.
Heading towards the south portico.
The south portico.
Ionic columns of the south portico.
The broken pediment.

Inside, one is greeted with a scene of devastation: blank walls, evidence of fire, walls devoid of panelling or plaster. The roof is a modern addition. Even so, strangely enough, one can still appreciate how magnificent it must have looked in its heyday. Some features survived the 1822 fire and still on display in the main hall, which leads to another door opening on the north side, and into the main courtyard.

Either side of the entrance hall are quite spectacular spiral staircases which provide access to a first floor balcony from which to observe the destruction of the fire two centuries ago.

The basement rooms, which were servant quarters and the like, have been recently refurbished somewhat and can be explored.

The East Wing has a set of magnificent stables. I do not recall what the rooms above were once used for.

In our last visit to Seaton Delaval we were surprised—and pleased—to see that the West Wing had been opened, with a series of furnished rooms to view, and Delaval paintings and other possessions on display. On our previous visits going back to 2013 this wing had always been closed.

The gardens are not extensive, but paths have been opened up over the past couple of years or so to allow more access to explore the area within the Ha-Ha wall.

[1] You can find more of John’s stunning images around the local area on his Facebook page, Coastal Portraits by John Fatkin, and on X/Twitter at Coastal Portraits – It’s Grim up North.

 

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Potatoes have no special chemistry to induce romance . . . but they brought us together

Saturday 13 October 1973, 11:30 am
Lima, Peru

Fifty years ago today, Steph and I were married at the town hall (municipalidad) in the Miraflores district of Lima, where we had an apartment on Avenida José Larco. Steph had turned 24 just five days earlier; it would be my 25th in the middle of November.

Municipalidad de Miraflores, Lima

It was a brief ceremony, lasting 15 minutes at most, and a quiet affair.  Just Steph and me, and our two witnesses, John and Marian Vessey. And the mayor (or other official) of course.

John, a plant pathologist working on bacterial diseases of potato, was a colleague of ours at the International Potato Center (CIP) in Lima, who had joined the center a few months before I arrived in Lima in January 1973.

Enjoying pre-lunch drinks with Marian and John at ‘La Granja Azul‘ restaurant at Santa Clara – Ate, on the outskirts of Lima.

The newly-weds.

It’s by chance, I suppose, that Steph and I got together in the first place. We met at the University of Birmingham, where we studied for our MSc degrees in Conservation and Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources.

Steph arrived in Birmingham in September 1971, just after I had finished the one-year course. I was expecting imminently to head off to Peru where I had been offered a position at CIP to help curate the large collection of native potato varieties in the CIP genebank. So, had I flown off to South America then, our paths would have hardly crossed.

But fate stepped in I guess.

My departure to Peru was delayed until January 1973. So I registered for a PhD with renowned potato expert Professor Jack Hawkes (right, head of the Department of Botany and architect of the MSc course), and began my research in Birmingham while CIP’s Director General, Richard Sawyer, negotiated a financial package from the British government to support the center’s research for development agenda, and my work there in particular.

It must have been early summer 1972 that Steph and I first got together. Having completed the MSc written exams in May, Steph began a research project on reproductive strategies in three legume species, directed by Dr Trevor Williams (who had supervised my project a year earlier on lentils). And she completed the course in September.

By then, she had successfully applied for a scientific officer position at the Scottish Plant Breeding Station in Edinburgh (SPBS, now part—after several interim phases—of the James Hutton Institute in Dundee), as Assistant Curator of the Commonwealth Potato Collection. But that position wasn’t due to start until November.

Our VW Variant in Peru, around May 1973 – before receiving a Peruvian registration plate.

In early November I took delivery of a left-hand-drive Volkswagen for shipment to Peru. On a rather dismal Birmingham morning, we loaded up the VW with Steph’s belongings and headed north to Edinburgh. She returned to Birmingham in mid-December for her graduation.

Then, just after Christmas 1972, we met up in a London for a couple of days before I was due to fly out to Lima.

At that time we could not make any firm commitments although we knew that—given the opportunity—we wanted to be together.

Again fate stepped in. On 4 January 1973, Jack Hawkes and I flew to Lima. Jack had been asked to organize a planning conference to guide CIP’s program to collect and conserve native Andean potato varieties and their wild relatives.

Potato varieties from the Andes of Peru.

While I stayed in a small hotel (the Pensión Beech, in the San Isidro district) until I could find an apartment to rent, Jack stayed with Richard Sawyer and his wife Norma. And it was over dinner one evening that Jack mentioned to Richard that I had a ‘significant other’ in the UK, also working on potato genetic resources, and was there a possibility of finding a position at CIP for her. Richard mulled the idea over, and quickly reached a decision: he offered Steph a position in the Breeding and Genetics Department to work with the germplasm collection.

With that, Steph resigned from the SPBS and made plans to move to Lima in July, with us planning to get married later on in the year.

In the CIP germplasm screenhouses in La Molina. Bottom: with Peruvian potato expert Ing. Carlos Ochoa.

A couple of weeks after I arrived in Peru, I found an apartment in Miraflores at 156 Los Pinos (how that whole area has changed in the intervening 50 years), and that’s where Steph joined me.

In our Los Pinos apartment, Miraflores in July 1973.

A few weeks later we found a larger apartment, nearby at 730 Avda. Larco, apartment 1003. Very interesting during earthquakes!

Around mid-August 1973 we began the paperwork (all those tramites!) to marry in Peru. Not as simple as you might think, but on reflection perhaps not as difficult as we anticipated.

While we were allowed to post marriage banns in the British Embassy, we had to announce our intention to marry in the official Peruvian government gazette, El Peruano, and one of the principal daily broadsheets (El Comercio if memory serves me right), and have the police visit us at our apartment to verify our address. I think we also had to have blood tests as well. This all took time, but everything was eventually in place for us to set the wedding date: 13 October.

Some friends wanted to give us a big wedding, but Steph said she just wanted an intimate, quiet day. So that’s what we organized.

In the week leading up to our wedding, we had to present all the notarised documents at the municipality. After the ceremony, we signed the registry, hand-written in enormous volumes (or tomos). There was a bank of clerical staff, all with their Parker fountain pens, inscribing the details of each wedding in their respective tomo. A week later we collected our Constancia de Matrimonio (with some errors) which detailed in which tomo (No. 83, page 706) our marriage had been recorded, as well as photocopies (now sadly faded) of the actual page.

My work, collecting potatoes, took me all over the Andes; not so much for Steph who only made visits every other week or so to CIP’s highland experiment station (at over 3000 masl) in Huancayo east of Lima, and a six hour drive away.

However, Steph and I explored Peru together as much as we could, taking our VW on several long trips, to the north and central Andes, and south to Lake Titicaca. We also delayed our honeymoon until December 1973, flying to Cusco for a few days, and spending one night at Machu Picchu.

At Machu Picchu, December 1973.

In May 1975, we returned to the UK for seven months for me to complete my PhD, returning to Lima just before New Year.

With Jack Hakes and Trevor Williams at my PhD graduation on 12 December 1975 at the University of Birmingham.

Christmas Day 1976 in Turrialba.

Then, in April 1976, we moved to Costa Rica where I worked on potato diseases and production, based in Turrialba, some 70 km east of the capital city, San José. Under the terms of our visas, Steph was not permitted to work in Costa Rica. I became regional representative for CIP’s Region II (Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean) in August 1997 when my colleague, Oscar Hidalgo (who was based in Toluca, Mexico) headed to North Carolina to begin his PhD studies.

Our elder daughter Hannah Louise was born in San José in April 1978. Later that year, we took our first home leave in the UK and both sets of grandparents were delighted to meet their first granddaughter.

24 April 1978 in the Clinica Santa Rita, San José, Costa Rica.

On home leave in the UK in September 1978.

With Steph’s parents Myrtle and Arthur (top) in Southend-on-Sea, and mine, Lilian and Fred, in Leek.

We spent five happy years in Costa Rica before moving back to Lima at the end of November 1980, and began making plans to move to the Philippines by Easter 1981.

However, in early 1981, a lectureship was created at the University of Birmingham, in the Department of Plant Biology (formerly Botany, where Steph and I had studied), for which I successfully applied. We left CIP at the end of March and had set up home in Bromsgrove (about 13 miles south of Birmingham in north Worcestershire) by the beginning of July.

4 Davenport Drive

A decade after we were married, we were already a family of four. In May 1982 Philippa Alice was born in Bromsgrove.

30 May 1982 in Bromsgrove hospital.

During the 1980s we enjoyed many family holidays, including this one in 1983 on the canals close to home.

Many other family holidays followed, in South Wales, in Norfolk, on the North York Moors, and in 1989, in the Canary Islands.

In Tenerife, Canary Islands in July 1989. Steph is carrying the binoculars that I bought around 1964 and which I still possess.

Hannah (left) and Philippa (right) thrived at local Finstall First School, shown here on their first day of school in 1983 and 1987, respectively.

My work at Birmingham kept me very busy (perhaps too busy), but I particularly enjoyed working with my graduate students (many of them from overseas), and my undergraduate tutees.

All in all, it looked like Birmingham would be a job for life. That was not to be, however. By the end of the 1980s, academic life had sadly lost much of its allure, thanks in no small part to the policies and actions of the Thatcher government. We moved on.

By 1993, we had already been in the Philippines for almost two years, where I had been hired (from July 1991) as head of the Genetic Resources Center (GRC) at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, some 65 km south of Manila in the Philippines. I moved there ahead of Steph and the girls (then aged 13 and nine) who joined me just after Christmas 1991.

Meeting fellow newcomer and head of communications, Ted Hutchcroft and his wife at our joint IRRI welcoming party in early 1992.

In 1993 I learned to scuba dive, a year after Hannah, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. Philippa trained a couple of years later.

Getting ready to dive, at Arthur’s Place, Anilao, Philippines in January 2003.

Steph was quite content simply to snorkel or beachcomb, and we derived great pleasure from our weekends away (about eight or nine a year) at Anilao, 92 km south from Los Baños. In fact, our weekends in Anilao were one of our greatest enjoyments during the 19 years we spent in the Philippines.

Steph became an enthusiastic beader and has made several hundred pieces of jewelry since then. In Los Baños we had a live-in helper, Lilia, and so in the heat of Los Baños, Steph was spared the drudgery of housework or cooking, and could focus on the hobbies she enjoyed, including a daily swim in the IRRI pool, and looking after her garden and orchids.

Steph and Lilia on our last day in IRRI Staff Housing #15 on 30 April 2010.

Hannah and Philippa completed their school education at the International School Manila (ISM) in 1995 and 1999 respectively, both passing the International Baccalaureate Diploma with commendably high scores.

Graduation at ISM: Hannah and Philippa with their friends from around the world.

Traveling to Manila each day from Los Baños had not been an easy journey, due to continual roadworks and indescribable traffic. It was at least two hours each way. By the time Philippa finished school in 1999, the buses were leaving Los Baños at 04:30 in order to reach Manila by the start of classes at 07:15.

In October 1996, Hannah started her university degree in psychology and social anthropology at Swansea University in the UK. However, after two years, she transferred to Macalester College, a highly-rated liberal arts college in St Paul, Minnesota, graduating summa cum laude in psychology and anthropology in May 2000. She then registered for a PhD in industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Minnesota. Philippa began her BSc degree in psychology at the prestigious University of Durham, UK later that same year, in October.

Hannah’s graduation in May 2000 at Macalester College, with Philippa and Michael (Hannah’s boyfriend, now her husband).

Once Hannah and Philippa had left for university, IRRI paid for return visits each year, especially at Christmas.

Christmas 2001. Michael joined Hannah for the visit.

While my work took me outside the Philippines quite often, Steph and I did manage holidays together in Hong Kong/Macau and Australia. And, together with Philippa, we toured Angkor Wat in Cambodia in December 2000.

But Steph also accompanied me on work trips to Laos, Bali, and Japan. She also joined me and my staff when we visited the rice terraces in northern Luzon in March 2009.

Enjoying a cold beer as the sun goes down, near Sagada, northern Luzon, Philippines.

Overlooking the Batad rice terraces in northern Luzon in March 2009.

However, we always used our annual home leave allowance to return to the UK, stay in our home in Bromsgrove (which we had purposely left unoccupied), and meet up with family and friends.

Philippa was awarded a 2:1 degree in July 2003, and the graduation ceremony took place inside Durham Cathedral. She then headed off to Vancouver for a year, before returning to the UK and looking for a job, eventually settling in Newcastle upon Tyne where she has lived ever since.

Outside Durham Cathedral where Phil received her BSc degree from the university’s Chancellor, the late Sir Peter Ustinov.

Hannah married Michael in May 2006, and finished her PhD. We flew to Minnesota from the Philippines.

15 May 2006, at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory in Como Park, St Paul.

PhD graduation at the University of Minnesota.

Philippa registered for a PhD in biological psychology at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne where she was already working.

Professionally, the period between 2001 and my retirement in 2010 was the most satisfying. I had changed positions at IRRI in May, moving from GRC to join the institute’s senior management team as Director for Program Planning and Communications (DPPC). I worked with a great team, and we really made an impact to increase donor support for IRRI’s research program. However, by 2008/9 when my contract was up for renewal, Steph and I had already agreed not to continue with IRRI, but take early retirement and return to the UK.

But not quite yet. IRRI’s Director General, Bob Zeigler, persuaded me to stay on for another year, and organize the celebrations for the institute’s 50th anniversary. Which I duly did, and had great fun doing so.

But as our retirement date approached in April 2010, I was honored by the institute’s Board of Trustees with a farewell party (despedida) coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the very first Board meeting in April 1960.

14 April 2010 – IRRI’s 50th celebration dinner and our despedida.

Friday 30 April was my last day in the office.

With my DPPC friends. L-R: Eric, Corinta, Zeny, me, Vhel, and Yeyet.

We flew back to the UK two days later, arriving on Monday 3 May and taking delivery of our new car, a Peugeot 308, the following day.

Philippa and Andi flew off to New York in October 2010 and were married in Central Park. She graduated with her PhD in December.

By 2013 we had been married for four decades, and were well-settled into retirement, enjoying all the opportunities good weather gave us to really explore Worcestershire and neighboring counties, especially as National Trust and English Heritage members. And touring Scotland in 2015, Northern Ireland in 2017, Cornwall in 2018, East Sussex and Kent in 2019, and Hampshire and West Sussex in 2022.

We were, by then, the proud grandparents of three beautiful boys and a girl.

Callum Andrew (August 2010) – St Paul, Minnesota

Elvis Dexter (September 2011) – Newcastle upon Tyne

Zoë Isobel (May 2012) – St Paul, Minnesota

Felix Sylvester (September 2013) – Newcastle upon Tyne

And how could we ever forget a very special day in February 2012, when Steph, Philippa and my former colleague from IRRI, Corinta joined me at Buckingham Palace for an investiture.

Receiving my OBE from King Charles III (then HRH The Prince of Wales) on 14 February 2012.

With Steph and Philippa outside the gates of Buckingham Palace.

With Corinta and Steph in the courtyard of Buckingham Palace after the investiture.

Since 2010, we have traveled to the USA each year except during the pandemic years (2020-2022), and only returning there this past May and June. We’ve made some pretty impressive road trips around the USA, taking in the east and west coasts, and all points in between with the exception of the Deep South. Just click here to find a list of those road trips.

In July 2016, a few months after I broke my leg, Hannah and family came over to the UK, and we got together with Phil and Andi and the boys for the first time, sharing a house in the New Forest.

Our first group photo as a family, near Beaulieu Road station in the New Forest, 7 July 2016. L-R: Zoë, Michael, me (still using a walking stick), Steph, Callum, Hannah, Elvis, Andi, Felix, and Philippa.

And they came over again in July 2022, to our new home in the northeast of England where we had moved from Bromsgrove in October 2020 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In our garden in Backworth, North Tyneside, August 2022.

L-R: Felix, Elvis, Zoë, and Callum, at Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland in August 2022.

So it’s 2023, and fifty years have passed since we married.

During our visit to the USA this past May and June, we met up with Roger Rowe and his wife Norma, along the Mississippi River at La Crosse in Wisconsin.

Roger joined CIP in 1973 as head of the Breeding and Genetics Department and was our first boss. Roger also co-supervised my PhD. So it was great meeting up with them again 50 years on.

We’ve been in the northeast just over three years now, and haven’t regretted for a moment making the move north. It’s a wonderful part of the country, and in fact has given us a new lease of life.

At Steel Rigg looking east towards the Whin Sill, Crag Lough, and Hadrian’s Wall, Northumberland, February 2022.

Steph has taken great pleasure in developing her new garden here. It’s a work in progress, and quite a different challenge from her garden in Worcestershire, discovering what she can grow and what won’t survive this far north or in the very heavy (and often waterlogged) soil.

22 August 2023

I’ve had much enjoyment writing this blog since 2012, combining my interests of writing and photography. It has certainly given me a focus in retirement. I never thought I’d still be writing as many stories, over 700 now, and approaching 780,000 words. Since returning to the UK, I’ve also tried to take a daily walk of 2-4 miles. However, that’s not been possible these past six months. A back and leg problem has curtailed my daily walk, but I’m hopeful that it will eventually resolve itself and I’ll be able to get out and about locally, especially along the famous North Tyneside waggonways.

After 50 years together, we have much to be thankful for. We’ve enjoyed the countries where we have lived and worked, or visited on vacation. Our daughters and their families are thriving. Hannah is a Senior Director of Talent Management and Strategy for one of the USA’s largest food companies, and Philippa is an Associate Professor of Biological Psychology at Northumbria University.

Sisters!

With Hannah and Michael, Callum and Zoë (and doggies Bo and Ollie, and cat Hobbes) in St Paul, MN on 18 June 2023.

With Philippa and Andi, Elvis and Felix (and doggies Rex and Noodle) on 2 September 2023.

And here we are, at South Stack cliffs, in the prime of life (taken in mid-September) when we enjoyed a short break in North Wales.

Steph with Philippa and family on her birthday on 8 October.

13 October 2023 – still going strong!

While drafting this reminiscence, I came across this article by Hannah Snyder on the Northwest Public Broadcasting website, and it inspired the title I used.

by

It doesn’t add up

Several weeks ago (or was it months?) UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right) announced that his government would soon propose plans to reform secondary education for all pupils to study mathematics and English up to the age of 18, like many other countries.

After GCSEs (known as ‘O Levels’ back in the day when I was at school in the 1960s), taken at 15/16, many pupils receive no further tuition in maths (or English for that matter), and specialise in their final two years of high school, taking just three subjects, known as ‘A Levels’ (Advanced Level) as university entrance exams.

During his speech to the Tory Party conference on 4 October Sunak pledged to introduce this ‘revolutionary’ change. That’s assuming, of course, that the Tories remain in power after the next General Election. Which seems highly unlikely if the latest polls are to be believed. (Should Labour win the next election, I have no idea what its policy on continuing maths and English education will be, although as far back as 2014 they made it one of their policy pledges¹).

By teatime on the 4th, the Prime Minister’s Office had posted a press release on the government’s website.

Justifying this proposal, Sunak indicated that this new qualification for 16-19 year olds will put technical and academic education on an equal footing and ensure that all young people leave school knowing the basics in maths and English.

The new Advanced British Standard will bring together the best of A Levels and T Levels into a single new qualification. Students will take a larger number of subjects at both ‘major’ and ‘minor’ level, with most studying a minimum of five subjects at different levels – for example, three majors alongside two minors. Importantly, students will have the freedom to take a mix of technical and academic subjects, giving them more flexibility over their future career options.

However, it would take at least a decade to introduce such a change apparently. Very quickly, unions and teachers dismissed this proposed reform. Not, I hope, because they were opposed to reform in principle, but because schools do not have the staff or resources to teach English and maths to age 18. Yes, that is a real issue, and it will take political courage from the next government to tackle this issue head on, and support education at the level required. And to increase standards and achievements for GCSE students.

Notwithstanding there little or nothing about this Tory government I can support – and they certainly won’t have my vote in 2024 or whenever the election is called – I am actually in favor of this proposed educational reform. Let me explain.

When I was in high school (1960-1967), maths was one of my least favorite subjects. I dreaded maths lessons. But I did manage a pass in ‘O’ Level maths in 1964, but never took a maths course per se ever since. Much to my regret. And there are thousands of schoolchildren in exactly the same boat as me. Cowed by maths, and thus uninterested in the beauty of the discipline.

I often wish I had been able, had the ability, and perhaps more importantly had the support of good maths teachers to instill a continuing interest. I had really poor teachers at my high school, only interested in those who could and tolerating (just) those who struggled.

Having said all this, I have spent much of my career in agricultural science working with numbers, and thoroughly enjoying it. Indeed, in 2017 I wrote this blog post, There’s beauty in numbers, about my enjoyment of playing with data, looking for patterns and trends, and coming to conclusions about the behavior of the plants and crops I was studying. But although I became reasonably proficient (under guidance and advice from those better experienced than me) in the use of statistics, I do wish I had a better theoretical background underlying some of the statistical concepts I applied.

But beyond the basics of algebra, geometry, or trigonometry that high school pupils receive leading up to GCSEs, most do not need higher levels of mathematical education, like calculus for example. What they do need, in my opinion, are good numeracy skills, and how maths operates in the real world.

And as far as English is concerned, my emphasis for many students would be having the ability to write coherent prose and learning how to communicate effectively, both in written form and verbally. No need for deep analysis of set texts by Shakespeare or others.

So how would they achieve this? Sunak’s proposed Advanced British Standard qualification is his solution.

Often referred to (in previous government statements) as an English or British Baccalaureate, the Advanced British Standard seems remarkably similar to an existing and widely accepted qualification: the International Baccalaureate Diploma, offered in over 3600 state and private schools worldwide (but in just 22 state schools in the UK, although offered in 71 private ones).

If a widely-accepted qualification is up and running, and has been for decades, since 1968 in fact, why bother to reinvent the wheel with the Advanced British Standard? Is this another case of British exceptionalism?

This is what one headmistress, Victoria Hearn (right), Principal of state-assisted Impington Village College and Impington International College near Cambridge had to say about the proposal in a letter to The Guardian on 27 September last:

While Rishi Sunak’s plans to reform post-16 education are welcome news, I can’t help but feel that valuable resources could be saved by utilising a tried and tested education framework that students are already benefiting from. The international baccalaureate (IB) diploma enables students to study six subjects including mathematics, English and a foreign language until the age of 18, providing a broader and more rewarding syllabus compared with that of the UK’s national curriculum.

The development of a “British baccalaureate” will be costly, and funding this new vision will be a concern to many, particularly for state-funded schools that are already overstretched. In the UK, the IB is often seen as only accessible to independent schools, but with some creative budgeting and timetable management, a comprehensive IB programme can be delivered by state schools. We have been offering the IB at the state-maintained Impington Village college for more than 30 years as we believe it places our students in the best position to succeed in the global workplace.

Adapting the current curriculum framework is going to be lengthy and costly. The IB represents a proven alternative that can give students the broad range of skills required to thrive in the future.

Also, these are the IB values:

  • valuing inquiry and reflection, encouraging students to be open minded in their learning;
  • being principled and encouraging a caring attitude;
  • promoting high quality communication and discussions within the school community; and
  • encouraging international-mindedness and building respectful relationships.

I couldn’t agree more. And here are some reasons why.

First, from my own experience, I believe keeping your options broad is a positive perspective. In fact,

  • I studied both humanities and sciences at ‘A Level’: English Literature, Geography, and Biology (and General Studies).
  • I read for a combined BSc degree at the University of Southampton (1967-1970) in Environmental Botany and Geography.
  • For my MSc degree at the University of Birmingham in the conservation and use of plant genetic resources (1970-1971) many different topics were included.
  • It wasn’t until I began my PhD on potatoes (awarded 1975) that I settled into a narrow discipline.

Second, I don’t agree with either the retired teacher who thinks that additional ‘useless’ subjects in a baccalaureate would not be appropriate for many pupils, or the Emeritus Professor of Mathematical Education, who felt that students applying for maths at university would not have appropriate preparation. Both expressed their views in letters to The Guardian. The professor seemingly doesn’t appreciate that IB subjects are taught at both a higher and lower level. And, in any case, from my experience as a university lecturer (1981-1991, in plant biology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Birmingham) many first year university courses are designed to bring everyone up to the same level.

Furthermore, and again from my university days as a tutor, many students would certainly benefit from having a received a broader pre-university education, that would have given them a broader perspective on life, with access to the humanities as well as sciences, and would have enhanced, I believe, their ability to think and discuss more critically, and present their ideas verbally as well as written.

And lastly, both my daughters took the IB Diploma, and emerged with highly creditable grades at age 17, with subsequent access to good universities in the USA and UK, and endowing them with the academic capabilities and discipline to graduate with excellent degrees, and subsequently taking a PhD each in psychology.

But, I should add, their IB Diplomas were not earned at a British state school. In July 1991, I took a senior position with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines. My wife Steph and daughters followed me out to the Philippines by the end of the year, when Hannah and Philippa were 13 and nine (and had just moved up to high school and middle school respectively just three months previously in our home town, Bromsgrove, in Worcestershire).

Steph and I discussed the various education options. We were not keen in sending them to boarding school in the UK. There was a British School in Manila, but that did not, in the 1990s, offer an ‘A Level’ curriculum. So, after GCSEs, we would have had to send them back to the UK. Again not something we considered.

So both were enrolled in the fee-paying International School Manila (ISM), with the expectation from the outset that the IB Diploma would be their pre-university goal. Fees were subsidised by my employer as many IRRI children were also enrolled there, and traveled the 70 km daily each way north from Los Baños, where IRRI’s research center is located, into the city.

Yes, the courses were tough. Since besides the six academic subjects (three at higher, three at lower), IB students took a Theory of Knowledge course. Both our daughters studied English, history, and biology at higher level, and maths studies, French, and psychology at lower level.

Each had to complete a 4000 word essay based on independent research. Hannah’s history project was an analysis of the impact of the railways on the canals in mid-19th century England. Philippa made an analysis of A Shropshire Lad, an epic poem by Bromsgrove classical scholar poet, AE Housman (whose statue, right, proudly stands in the High St there) and interpreting his repressed sexuality through the poem’s themes.

For her community project, Hannah helped each weekend at a Montessori school in Los Baños, while Philippa joined a group for two weeks helping to construct a road in the mountains north of Manila.

There was one last challenge: the daily journey into Manila. Classes began at 07:15, and by the time my younger daughter graduated in 1999, the IRRI bus for ISM was departing from Los Baños at 04:30, and not returning until 16:30 or later. Then there were homework assignments to complete until late evening. All the family was relieved come graduation!

I’ve asked them about the IB experience. Both were unequivocal. The Diploma gave them enhanced skills for critical thinking, time organization, as well as covering the various subjects in depth. They both said the Diploma was a worthwhile qualification. It certainly hasn’t held them back.

So as the discussion continues over post-16 education and whether to replace ‘A Levels’ with a broader curriculum qualification, it’s certainly worthwhile looking at the IB mix, and what level of maths and English education and skills most students really need to prepare them for the workplace, and life in general.

¹ 11 October update. Labour just announced at its 2023 Conference that there will be a focus on teaching ‘real world maths’ to younger children. See this article in The Guardian.