Robert E. Allan Plant Breeding
Symposium

Commentary and Reflection
by Dr. Robert E. Allan at the first symposium, April 18, 20/05 (pdf)

This indeed is an unexpected honor for me. I think that I had a good career, but not exceptional. A USDA administrator told me that they had closed out three northwest wheat breeding programs because plant breeding was pedestrian research, not cutting edge. He said all breeders do is cross parent “A” to parent “B”, and recover progeny having good traits from both parents. At first it made me mad, but he probably was right. I became involved in wheat research over 50 years ago. I guess that if you walk that long, you ought to get somewhere!

When I got out of the Army in 1954, I decided to go to grad school. I initially applied at Iowa State, where I had received by B.S. degree. I didn’t get accepted—I think they found out I had been a member of Iowa State’s version of animal house fraternity. My second choice was Wisconsin, but that didn’t work out either. I was offered an assistantship at KSC in wheat breeding and took it. It was under Elmer Heyne. He was a gifted teacher and scientist—the classic example of a college prof. He worked hard and expected his students to do the same. You didn’t lack for hands-on plant breeding experience. The project consisted of Dr. Heyne and one, sometimes two grad assistants. We mainly conducted winter wheat breeding, but also winter oats and barley. I have fond memories of my graduate days at KSC. When I left there I knew I wanted to be a wheat breeder-geneticist.

Jobs were scarce in 1957. I applied for a cereal breeding job in Wyoming, but didn’t get it. I heard about a USDA position at Pullman, with Dr. O.A. Vogel and sent in my application. I had heard Orville talk about his semidwarf lines at a wheat conference claiming they yielded over 100 bu/A. Such yields were unheard of in the Great Plains. After several weeks I got a telegram saying I got the job without an interview. Needless to say, I was thrilled for this opportunity. For the next 25 years Orville was my supervisor and mentor. You learned from Orville by observing what he did and how he did it, and then tried to figure out why he did things that way. He had a special knack of reading the behavior of his breeding material and closely monitoring its response under diverse situations. The field was Orville’s lab and it paid off in his accomplishments.

I think Pullman is the best place in the U.S. to do wheat research. You can grow all market classes of wheat—both spring and winter, as well as most wheat relatives. The environment allows for maximum, yield potential and nearly all of the important wheat diseases can be worked with.

Another advantage of being a USDA scientist in Pullman was you were 2600 miles from your administrators!

I arrived in Pullman at a historic time as Orville was in the final phase of choosing the first semidwarf cultivar – which was to be Gaines wheat. Poor emergence was a problem with semi-dwarfs and I was assigned to the problem. Our initial test showed semidwarfs as a group had shorter coleoptiles and slower seedling growth rates than non-semidwarf varieties. We hoped that semidwarf height and seedling development were only linked and could be broken. That was not the case—rather reduced coleoptile length, slow seedling growth rate and semidwarf plant height were pleiotropic traits. A break-through to the problem came not from breeding, but when a farmer invented a deep furrow drill that regulated the amount of soil covering the seed allowing semidwarfs to emerge in most instances.

We didn’t get around to explaining the inheritance of semidwarfism for several years. Monosomic analysis failed to identify the chromosomes involved. But the disomic populations of Chinese Spring X Norin 10/Brevor 14 clearly showed two independent genes were involved. We shoed that the medium semidwarf height of Gaines was controlled by one of the Norin 10/Brevor 14 genes while medium height of other semidwarfs had the other Norin 10/Brevor 14 gene. We named these genes SD1 and SD2 – now they are called RHTB1B and RHTD1B. One or both of these genes are being used in nearly every wheat breeding program in the world.

I bean working on multilines after my first two pureline club wheats were attacked by new stripe rust races within three years. As a graduate student I had read papers of Drs. Borlaug, Frey, and Browning on this concept. We released our first club multiline in 1982. Its components differed too much in appearance and maturity and it never gained wide acceptance. But its heterogenous resistance proved effective. After two more pedigree bred pureline club varieties were attacked by new races of stripe rust we released the multiline in 1991. It was the leading club wheat until only recently and its resistance continues to be effective. I believe multilines still have a place, especially in public breeding programs.

Foot rot resistance Madsen had the most economic impact of my varieties. I get credit as the breeder, but others had major input in its development. French scientists gave me germplasm having T. Ventricosum foot resistance that they had transferred onto chromosome 7D of wheat. WSU pathologists showed us how to grow foot rot inoculum, inoculate our breeding material in the field, and rate plant resistance based on a lesion scoring system. For the first time we were able to get reliable results screening our lines for resistance in the field. We showed that the T. Ventricosum resistance was simply inherited, based on segregation of progeny for their lesion scores. Dr. Dave McMillin of Georgia State University asked us to send him seed of this material. He had located an isozyme of T. Ventricosum on chromosome 7D. We sent him the seed and he ran isozyme analysis on them. Resulted showed the isozyme of T. Ventricosum and the foot rot resistance gene were tightly linked. We now had a quick and simple way to screen plants for resistance. Other programs in the U.S. and elsewhere adopted this method.

Finally, I guess I should offer some advice—it’s what us old guys do!

• Learn what your contemporaries are doing and do something else. Before I arrived in Pullman, Orville’s bosses were pressuring him to drop his recombinant breeding approach and use back crossing to put genes for smut resistance into existing varieties. He wouldn’t do it and made his famous quip, “Where would the Ford Motor Co. be today if Henry Ford had backcrossed to the Model T”.
• Know your crop – study the literature including the old. Some ideas aren’t so new, learn the environmental variables that affect the crop including the different ways it will be managed. Then choose the most appropriate breeding strategy. Currently variety mixtures account for over 30% of the wheat grown in Washington. I believe there is a message there for our breeders.
• Ally yourself with productive colleagues, that you enjoy working with. Team research is almost essential to solve today’s problems.
• It is nice to feel wanted. A great thing about my job was our stake holders or wheat growers were keenly interested in our research. It is hard to stay motivated if no one cares what you are doing.
• Finally, listen carefully to our speakers today. They may not be wheat, barley, or pea breeders, but I am certain you will come away with useful information.

I understand that Dr. Steve Jones was responsible for organizing this symposium. I am sure he had a lot to do with me getting this honor. I thank him for that. Steve has many of the qualities of my mentor, Elmer Heyne, who I have already said I held in high regard. Thank you.

R. E. Allan