Biographical Memoirs Volume 46 (1975) / Chapter Skim
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5. Donald Forsha Jones
5. Donald Forsha Jones
Pages 134-157
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From page 135... ...
Jones made four distinct contributions. {ones's most practical contribution was the invention in 1917 of the double-cross method of hybrid seed production.
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From page 136... ...
East, who had participated for several years in the famous experiments at the University of Illinois on selection for chemical composition of corn, initiated a corn-breeding program at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven in 1905. When East moved to the Bussey Institution of Harvard as a professor in 1909 he was succeeded by Herbert K
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From page 137... ...
Ironically, too, once the use of double crosses established the production of hybrid corn on a highly successful scale, corn breeders found that, by developing more vigorous inbred strains than those isolated by Shull, East, and {ones, it was possible to employ single crosses instead of double crosses in the production of hybrid seed corn. Today much of the hybrid corn in the United States is represented either by single crosses or by three-way crosses, the latter being crosses of single crosses by inbred strains.
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From page 138... ...
Detasseling has been called the "peskiest and most expensive part of producing hybrid seed corn." Before cytoplasmic sterility was employed to avoid it, some one hundred and twenty-five thousand workers were engaged on the peak day of the season in removing tassels from corn plants.
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From page 139... ...
It not only drastically reduced the labor required in producing hybrid seed but also eliminated the reduction in yield of hybrid seed caused by the removal of one or more leaves in the detasseling operation. The method has probably been a factor also in making possible on an extensive scale the replacement of double crosses by higher-yielding single crosses.
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From page 140... ...
In 1969 there were reports that corn hybrids carrying the Texas cytoplasmic male sterility, the type almost universally employed, were becoming susceptible to the southern corn blight fungus, Helminthosporium mayd is. Since susceptibility to a disease determined by the cytoplasm had never previously been observed in the United States, these reports were met with skepticism on the part of some plant pathologists.
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From page 141... ...
. These common genetic loci may, like the universally used cytoplasmic male sterility in corn, become susceptible to new mutant pathogens with disastrous results in countries and regions already overpopulated.
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Donald Forsha Jones was born near Hutchinson, Kansas, on April 16, 1890. He was the second of four children of Oliver Winslow Jones and Minnie Wilcox Bush Jones.
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After completing his secondary school education, Jones attended Kansas State Agricultural College, where he majored in horticulture. ~~ ' ' ~ ~ His college years apparently were neither particularly inspiring nor enjoyable, and he was not regarded as an outstanding student.
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From page 144... ...
In February 1915 he moved to New Haven to take charge under East's supervision of the plantbreeding program, which had been initiated by East in 1905 at the Connecticut station. For the next several years he divided his time between New Haven and Cambridge Jones remained at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station for the rest of his professional life, and this continuity of effort was undoubtedly one factor in his lifelong productiveness in research and publication.
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From page 145... ...
A joint paper of East and ~ones, "Genetic Studies on the Protein Content of Maize," published in 1917, showed how effective selection in self-fertilized lines can be in changing the characteristics of a population. This paper was also one of the first to describe a method of breeding now known as "recurrent selection." The method has proved to be quite effective, not only in changing chemical composition but also in improving the combining ability of inbred strains.
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From page 146... ...
Ralph Singleton, had found the mutant in a New England variety of white flint corn in the early 1920s and had determined its genetic linkage relations. Jones continued to maintain a stock of opaque-2 in hopes that this unusual characteristic would some day prove useful.
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From page 147... ...
In addition he was given awards by the Connecticut State Confederation of Women's Clubs, the American Seed Trade Association, the Connecticut State Grange, the New York Farmers' Club, and the Botanical Society of America.
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Rep. = Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station Report I
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East. Genetic studies on the protein content of maize.
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~Science, 55: 348-49. Indirect evidence from duplex hybrids bearing upon the number and distribution of growth factors in the chromosomes.
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I The production of inbred strains of corn.
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Stn. Somatic segregation due to hemizygous and missing genes and its bearing on the problem of atypical growth.
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Spragg Memorial Lectures on Plant Breeding, Michigan State College, East Lansing, MichiProc.
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Sweet corn hybrids Lexington, Lincoln and Lee.
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IV. Combining ability of successive generations of inbred sweet corn.
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From page 156... ...
1956 Genic and cytoplasmic control of pollen abortion in maize. Tn Genetics in Plant Breeding, Brookhaven Symposia in Biology, 9: 101-12.
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