Essay review: History of agriculture and the study of heredity ? a new horizon

Abstract

In the spring of 1966 I had the privilege of interviewing L. C. Dunn (1893-1974), who became a graduate student in genetics under W. E. Castle at Harvard in 1914. 1 asked Dunn if the possibility of applying Mendelian genetics to agriculture had formed any part of his interest in the study of heredity. His answer was quick and emphatic: No! He entered the field to work on theory of heredity. I have no doubt than Dunn's view was true enough for him and for many of his contemporaries: they were not directly and personally motivated to study genetics because of agricultural concerns. However, the prevailing view that agriculture had little to do with the development of Mendelian theory in the twentieth century, or that Mendelian theory had little impact on agricultural development, is a myth promoted largely by venerable denizens of classical genetics such as A. H. Sturtevant or Dunn himself. The three books reviewed here amply show the long and interconnected history shared by those who, on the one hand, sought to understand the theoretical basis of inheritance, and those who sought to improve agricultural productivity. Of the three works, Nicholas Russell's is the most straightforward and least interpretive, serving more as the sixteenth-, seventeenthand eighteenth-century background for the other two works. Russell examines early attempts at inbreeding and crossbreeding, the various criteria by which desirable animals were selected (quite often mere size or appearance), and the gradual emergence of systematic record-keeping and breeding strategies.