Raoul A. Robinson (September 25, 1928 in
Saint Helier
St Helier (; Jèrriais: ; ) is the Capital city, capital of Jersey, the largest of the Channel Islands in the English Channel. It is the most populous of the twelve parishes of Jersey, with a population of 35,822, over one-third of the island' ...
,
Jersey
Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...
- 25 July 2014) was a
Canadian/British plant scientist with more than forty years of wide-ranging global experience in crop improvement for both commercial and
subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture occurs when farmers grow crops on smallholdings to meet the needs of themselves and their families. Subsistence agriculturalists target farm output for survival and for mostly local requirements. Planting decisions occu ...
. He is best known for his application of
system theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or artificial. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structur ...
to crop
pathosystem A pathosystem is a subsystem of an ecosystem and is defined by the phenomenon of parasitism. A plant pathosystem is one in which the host species is a plant. The parasite is any species in which the individual spends a significant part of its lifesp ...
s and the elucidation of the concepts of
horizontal and
vertical resistance The term vertical resistance, used commonly in the context of plant selection, was first used in 1963 by James Edward Van der Plank to describe single-gene resistance. This contrasted with the term Horizontal Resistance, horizontal resistance which ...
and their implication on breeding for durable resistance.
Education
He was educated at
Victoria College, Jersey
Victoria College is a Government of Jersey, Government-run, Independent school, fee-paying, academically selective day school ,
[Victoria College Register 1929-56] and graduated from the
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...
in 1951.
Career
Over the course of his adventurous and productive career, Robinson concentrated most intensively on maize, potatoes, beans, and coffee. In addition, he has worked with cotton, tomatoes, dates, wheat, alfalfa, cocoa, cassava, coconut, tobacco, taro, sweet potato, vanilla, black pepper, and other crops.
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References
1928 births
2014 deaths
Canadian phytopathologists
Jersey academics
Alumni of the University of Reading
20th-century Canadian botanists
21st-century Canadian botanists
People from Saint Helier
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