Collection AW - Arthur Watkins Collection

Extent: 5 boxes

The notes and correspondence of Arthur Ernest Watkins regarding the wheat collection gathered from all around the world in the 1920s and 30s for the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge (now held at the John Innes Centre). Also includes files and letters from the 1970s-90s belonging to later curators of the seed collection, Victor Chapman, Terry Miller and Steve Reader. Includes sowing notes and keys to classifications.

Admin History: Arthur Ernest Watkins (1898-1967): read Maths and Natural Sciences at St John's, Cambridge, becoming a Fellow in 1924 and embarking on a career at the Plant Breeding Institute, later being appointed Lecturer in Cytology in the Faculty of Agriculture (1931-1948). He published many papers on wheat as well as his book Heredity and Evolution in 1935. He was secretary of the Genetical Society from 1932 to 1937. Watkins' work on Triticum (wheat) made a considerable contribution to the knowledge of this genus and did a great deal to elucidate the evolutionary and systematic relationships of the cultivated wheats and their chromosome structure (cytology). During the 1920s and 30s Watkins established at Cambridge a collection of wheats from around the world, largely selected from landraces of macaroni wheat (Triticum durum) and bread wheat (Triticum aestivum). Watkins was able to draw his collection from virtually all the wheat growing countries of the world; this was largely achieved through the official channels of the Board of Trade in London and its contacts with overseas officials and many of the original letters that accompanied the samples are archived at the John Innes Centre. Watkins also exchanged material with other wheat geneticists and letters in the archive show that he was in contact with leading international wheat workers, including John Percival at Reading, Nikolai Vavilov and C. A. Flacksberger in St. Petersburg, T. Shen in Shanghai and Otto Frankel in New Zealand. Victor Chapman joined the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge in 1936 as assistant to A E Watkins. After an interval of 5 years in the Royal Air Force during World War II he returned to the PBI under Dr G D H Bell to research plant breeding and variety production, especially interspecific and intergeneric crossing in Triticinae. The initial team consisted of Mary Gee, Leo Sachs and Victor Chapman, although only Chapman remained by the time Ralph Riley joined in 1952. Chapman collaborated with Riley on research and a number of publications including 'Genetic Control of the Cytologically Diploid Behaviour of Hexaploid Wheat', Nature, 182 (1958), 'The Inheritance in Wheat of Crossability with Rye', Genet. Res., Camb. (1967) and 'Cytological Determination of the Homœology of Chromosomes of Triticum aestivum', Nature, 203 (1968). Chapman retired from the Cytogenetics Department in 1980 (see PBI Annual Report 1980) and was especially remembered for his role in new research in wheat cytogenetics in the 1960s and his collaborations with Ralph Riley (Director 1971-1978). (For Ralph Riley see Annual Report 1978) Stephen Reader: Cereal Cytogeneticist: Scientific Officer at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge, 1971 - 1998, Senior Researcher, 1998 - 2000, Manager of Wheat Precise Genetic Stocks, 2000 - 2005 and Germplasm and Field Trials Manager, Crop Genetics Department, John Innes Centre 2006 - . Terence E Miller (7.4.40 - ): Cereal Cytogeneticist: worked at the Plant Breeding Institute, Cambridge from 1958 as Scientist Assistant , Senior Scientific Officer, 1976, Cytogenetics Department 1986, Cereals Research Department, Project Leader, 1999. Worked on projects involving chromosome pairing particularly the pairing between wheat and 'alien' chromosomes and was supervisor for the Institute's collection of wheat aneuploid, wheat-alien and alien species stocks. Publications include 'Aneuhaploids in Bread Wheat', T E Miller and Victor Chapman, Camb., (1976).