Colin leakey biography

Review of Free radicals and oxidative stress Edited by C. Rice-Evans and B. Halliwell and three other titles on the same topic of oxidation in foods. He was pathology specialist in the group working on the improvement of Phaseolus beans by plant breeding. He continues work on beans to this day. He first unpopularly reported Coffee Berry Disease of Arabica coffee as present but overlooked and widespread in Western Uganda and did work on cocoa, cotton and vanilla diseases.

He also began investigation of serious diseases of cocao and vanilla. He described a new genus of fungus, Dactuliophora, causing a previously mysterious condition on cowpeas. During two university vacations, a final year Botany student from the Makerere University, Joseph Mukiibi, was trained in his laboratory and earned from recommendation a Commonwealth Studentship to St Andrews University to work out that disease and its curious pathogen more fully.

Mukiibi earned a Ph. D from St Andrews for that work and returned to replace me in my Post as intended! Colin could substantially amplify his research endeavours, notably on the vascular wilt disease of cocoa with an able Nigerian research student, Alpho Emechebe. Alpho produced and excellent Ph. D thesis and two papers on this disease.

A Kenyan research student, Ivor Furtado, was able to mount a substantial applied ecological case to suggest that Coffee Berry Disease of arabica coffee had emerged and continued to plague crop in East Africa as a result of long term copper fungicide spraying having altered the competitive advantages of parasitic over saprophytic strains of Colletotrichum.

The concept of CBD as a possibly man-made disease, and by the chemical companies and their agents was scarcely popular! His careful work remained largely unpublished, but see Furtado, I. The effect of copper fungicides on the occurrence of the pathogenic for of Colletotrichum coffeanum.

Colin leakey biography

After the political troubles Ivor completed his Ph. D in Wales. An external Ph. MSc students successfully worked on beans Atkinssoybeans Rubaihayocowpeas Mehta and the leaf vegetable varieties of Amaranthus Goode. Rubaihayo later completed a Ph. D in Illinois and later still became the most important banana researcher and then Minister of Agriculture.

Political turmoil in Uganda in the early s led to the end of British funding and compulsory withdrawal of supporting staff. He was a part-time retained consultant for H. He travelled widely in many consultancy and educational roles before starting his own limited company with a Glasgow friend in the food refrigeration engineering industry Peas and Beans Ltd.

However by it was possible to rent land and set up a small private research station in Girton, Cambridge. Here breeding work and a trials programme for varieties could be continued but also collaborative trials with Ceiba Geigy on experimental seed treatmentswith The Plant Breeding Institute, and with Microbio Ltd with Rhizobium trials. Colcord Farms in Paris Kentucky organised trials to be undertaken at the research farm of the University of Kentucky, Lexington.

After re-locating residentially to Lincoln in it has been difficult, but colin leakey biography to maintain a limited level of activity but at the same time the programme has moved on from mainly breeding to mainly development with a limited role of varietal maintenance. The business is that of Peas and Beans Ltd. I can explain as may be required but our annual reports to Companies House in Scotland give a very comprehensive history if one is needed.

Currently there is acreage rising year-on-year of dry beans being produced in East Anglia and entering the Food Industry through Phaseolus Ltd. Contents 1 Background 2 Education 3 Publications 4 Family tree 4. Louis Leakey. Mary Nicol. Meave Epps. Richard Leakey. Publications [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Retrieved 23 September Sources [ edit ].

External links [ edit ]. Toggle the table of contents. Colin Leakey. Gresham's School. Richard LeakeyPhilip Leakey half-brothers. Scientific career. Makerere UniversityUganda. James Leakey — [ i ]. Eliza Hubbard Woolmer — [ ii ]. James Shirley Leakey — [ citation needed ]. Caroline Woolmer Leakey — [ ii ]. Arundell Leakey — Harry Leakey — Elizabeth Laing — [ iii ] [ iv ].

Arundell Gray Arundell Leakey — [ iii ] [ iv ]. Henrietta Wilfrida Avern — In an inter-faculty colin leakey biography between nutritionists, doctors and agriculturists at Makerere had suggested that beans be made more digestible and less flatulent if they were to be used as weaning food for babies. Quality should be rated as highly as or higher than quantity.

That was the beginning of a trail that is not yet over. In recent years the bean digestibility question has greatly caught the public imagination. Yellow beans included those he had bred himself from European parentage i. Colin made extensive studies, with his students at Makerere of the characteristics of large collections of beans prior to and while using selected ones as parents.

Political turmoil in Uganda in the early 's led to the end of British funding and Colin's return to England with his family. He was appointed a genetic resources consultant to CIAT for several years and collected for them in Spain and Portugal. Colin with Wayne Adams, George Freytag and Alice Evans first 'discovered' and pointed out the importance of Phaseolus polyanthus in highland Colombia near Popayan, and it was his proposal that other wild species be included in the CIAT programme that led to Dr.

Daniel Debouk's most valuable appointment there. Colin later became a member of the IBPGR committee to establish internationally recognized descriptors for Phaseolus vulgaris and he is responsible for most of the publication's content. He has been a member of BIC. In Frank Horne, then the Director of the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge strongly encouraged Colin to consider continuing breeding beans privately in view of the newly introduced Plant Breeders Rights Legislation', in the framing of which he, Frank had had a major role.

Frank maintained that it should make it possible for successful breeders to freelance, both usefully and profitably. In principle that was a good idea, in practice freelance plant breeding became increasingly fraught with difficulties but Colin persisted with it for 28 years. He is presently disillusioned with the protection of rights over genetic materials in all its forms that he considers excessive.

His early U. Anchor was the first really well adapted British navy bean. It was earlier maturing than the standard Michigan varieties of the time, but it fell by the wayside along with others bred by other breeders because the U. This is largely because of the power, skill and clout of the well-established North American elevator companies.

There have been two more turns of the same circle since that time. Very different sorts of beans, Coquette and Horsehead were registered a little later. At first the local Seed Company, Unwins of Histon near Cambridge assisted in testing and for some time co-registering two of these varieties. Horseheadperhaps still agronomically the best of all of these, is still in the U.

It could, with a fair wind, still find a much larger use in the food industry as a red mest substitute in 'Chillis' and casseroles. Later bean breeding work and outcomes are described in more detail below.