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Dr Yvonne Aitken was interviewed in 2001 for the Interviews with Australian scientists series. By viewing the interviews in this series, or reading the transcripts and extracts, your students can begin to appreciate Australia's contribution to the growth of scientific knowledge.
The following summary of Aitken's career sets the context for the extract chosen for these teachers notes. The extract covers her involvement in a field pea plant-breeding project. Use the focus questions that accompany the extract to promote discussion among your students.
Yvonne Aitken was born in 1911 in Horsham, Victoria. She was a student and researcher in the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Melbourne, receiving a Bachelor of Agricultural Science in 1936, a Master of Agricultural Science in 1939 and a Doctorate of Agricultural Science in 1969.
Aitken spent her working life at the University of Melbourne as a research assistant, demonstrator, lecturer and reader. She specialised in understanding how plant species can adapt to climate through different flowering responses. Although retired, she continues her work at the University in the Department of Crop Production, within the Institute of Land and Food Resources.
Aitken began her research career in 1936 investigating the effect of temperature and climate on flowering response in subterranean clover but later expanded her research systems to include other legumes, cereals and pasture grasses.
Collaborations within Australia combined with study leave and sabbatical trips in 1955, 1963 and 1975 resulted in Aitken’s work covering several continents and 10 distinctly different climates.
In 1974 Aitken’s research into flowering resulted in the book Flowering Time, Climate and Genotype. She also contributed to a textbook on agriculture for use in secondary schools.
You were working on another project at the same time as the clover, weren’t you?
Yes. In 1938 I had got tangled up with a breeding problem for field peas. That probably sounds odd now, but there was a real crisis in the Agricultural Department of Victoria. For 50 years the total wheat yield had been declining steadily, even though new varieties were being produced and put in the trial. The decline was so dreadful that the department rang up Professor Wadham, asking what could be done.
They worked out that the only way to improve it was to bring in a crop legume: a legume with the same capacity as clovers for getting extra nitrogen into the soil, and giving a good enough yield to be grown. If the farmer put that in the rotation that wheat always needed – one year of wheat, a year of another crop, a year’s rest and then back to the wheat – that might reverse the yield difficulty. And so I agreed to start a breeding program on field peas for the Mallee and the Wimmera.
It turned out to be quite long term, actually, because in a breeding program you have to find and test lots of varieties to see which have any value as parents for crossing. We had very few varieties in Australia and I had to get any varieties of peas I could from Europe and elsewhere, particularly from where they had been bred for difficult climates like shortness of growing season, due either to frost or to drought. Gathering that together took quite a few years, and then in the next year or two I was able to start doing the crossing. And I eventually got two varieties that could be bulked up for commercial use.
As I began to get the collection in my hands for growing, I started research out at Burnley Gardens. It was nearly ruined the first time, because wild pigeons came in and got most of the germinating seeds, so I needed somewhere else to grow my material. The discussion ended up with an offer of Dookie College. Not only did it have fewer pigeons but it had a bit more capacity, with a cage in which I could grow some of my crosses, and paddocks where the peas could perhaps be put under netting for the time being. ‘Anyway,’ I was told, ‘that’s all we’ve got to give you. You can go up to Walpeup, which would be another good place to start the seeds for the varieties. That’s the choice.’ And so that’s what we did.
We could do the crossings down here, but to begin the actual growing and selection we moved up to Dookie College. As soon as I found early plants out of the crosses, they were put together to get just enough seed for a plot (each plot was very small, about a metre square) and then that was planted at Walpiup and its equivalent was grown at Dookie as well. Walpiup was extremely important as the testing place for the plant’s survival. Our first few varieties ran into trouble because of a drought, but the next year, 1939, was very good. During those 20-plus years at Walpiup there were several drought years, but I did get evidence here and there of worthwhile varieties.
I crossed a good parent variety we had, an ordinary one which grew early in both the Mallee and the Wimmera, with something that had come from Ethiopia as a packet of seed – it landed on the desk at Burnley Gardens, was given to me because I was working on peas, and turned out to be slightly better at coping with drought than the ordinary one. Out of that came the two varieties that we decided, as a side outcome of the breeding program, to make commercial.
I’ve been told that some students who were helping you christened you Miss Peabody, because of the sun-hat you wore all day as you worked.
Oh yes, that was a great joke to the local students. Very few had hats in those days.
Select activities that are most appropriate for your lesson plan or add your own. You can also encourage students to identify key issues in the preceding extract and devise their own questions or topics for discussion.
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