Died: 16 April 1906, Lambrigg, New South Wales (now Australian
Capital Territory)
Had William Farrer not suffered from tuberculosis,
and had he been of a more acquisitive disposition, Australia might
never have become a world leader in wheat production, nor earned such
a huge revenue from wheat exports.
William James Farrer was born on 3 April 1845 at
Docker, Westmoreland, in the United Kingdom, the son of a tenant farmer.
Academically gifted, he gained a scholarship to Christ's Hospital,
London, where he won a gold and a silver medal for mathematics. After
winning another scholarship, to Pembroke College, Cambridge, he gained
his BA in 1868, then commenced medical studies. Soon afterwards, Farrer
contracted tuberculosis, and migrated to Australia at the age of 25.
Farrer began his working life in Australia as a
tutor on a sheep station. He had planned to buy pastoral property,
but was prevented owing to financial problems, and instead became
a surveyor. From 1875 to 1886, Farrer worked with the Department of
Lands in the Dubbo, Nyngan, Cobar and Cooma districts.
During these years, Farrer's agricultural interests
settled on wheat-growing, and he suspected that the wheat industry's
problems were due to the unsuitability of the breeds sown for Australian
conditions, in particular English wheats which were especially vulnerable
to rust fungi.
In 1886, Farrer purchased a small farm at Lambrigg
on the Murrumbidgee River, and began his experiments in wheat-breeding.
His initial concept was to use individual plants which showed superior
qualities, but he soon included foreign wheats and cross-fertilization
as a first step in the process. At this time, cross-breeding to improve
wheat was being attempted only in America and Europe, and Farrer had
to rely on overseas correspondence for his information.
In 1889, Australia experienced one of its worst-ever
wheat crops, flour mills were forced to import grain, and the financial
loss to due wheat rust was estimated at over £ 2.5 million.
The following year, an Intercolonial Rust in Wheat Conference was
convened by the Victorian minister for agriculture. Farrer stated,
by letter, his conviction that cross-breeding would not only improve
resistance to rust, but would result in better quality grain for baking.
Despite imperfect health, and impaired eyesight
caused by a riding accident, Farrer continued his experiments diligently
during the 1890s, and produced hundreds of cross-bred plants to be
culled and selected. To evaluate the milling and baking quality of
the grain, he gained the help of F B Guthrie, who developed a way
of quantitatively assessing the yield of flour from the mill and its
behaviour on baking. This enabled Farrer to select plants by results
rather than simply by appearance or repute.
Farrer, his wife and father-in-law had been living
on their own means until Farrer was appointed as wheat experimentalist
to the Department of Agriculture in 1898. Farrer's dedication to his
wheat-breeding experiments can be envisaged when he chose to stay
in Australia, and thus be disinherited, rather than return to England
to inherit a fortune from a wealthy uncle. Not surprisingly, many
people considered him to be "a crazy faddist" who wasted
his time on "pocket handkerchief wheat plots".
Observation of introduced wheats led to Farrer's
conviction that the best prospects for disease resistance and drought
tolerance lay in the Indian wheats, which, through early maturity,
generally escaped both disease and drought. However, Guthrie's studies
indicated that the late-maturing Canadian Fife wheats gave the best
milling and baking quality. Hybridization of the two varieties, and
selection of the plants that combined the advantages of both, seemed
to be the answer. Farrer produced a number of varieties in the early
1890s, and his first commercially-grown wheat, called Bobs
appeared in 1898. A variety known as Comeback yielded flour
"better than the best imported Manitoba", according to the
manager of the Adelaide Milling Company in 1914.
Nevertheless, before the turn of the century flour
millers still preferred the soft Purple Straw varieties with
which they were familiar. It was not until a poor harvest in 1896,
when hard wheat of the same quality as Farrer's had to be imported
from North America, that the millers began to realise the advantages
of Farrer's wheats. At this stage, though, his wheats could not match
the yields of the established varieties during seasons when disease
was not a problem. Farrer and Guthrie therefore realised that they
would need to include some of the higher-yielding older varieties
of wheat in their breeding programs.
In 1895, Farrer produced a wheat from a cross-breed
of a Fife-Indian wheat, Yandilla, with 14A, a Purple
Straw wheat. The plant was described as "specially fine with
good brown heads and strong straw". After further selection,
a high-yielding, rust-escaping wheat was produced and named in 1901
in honour of the year of Federation. From 1910 to 1925, Federation
wheat was the leading wheat breed for the whole of Australia. In addition
to its hardiness and high yields, its short, strong straw made it
ideal for Australian harvesting methods.
By 1914, twenty-two of the twenty-nine varieties
of wheat recommended for growing in New South Wales were Farrer wheats.
These varieties had a huge impact on overall production, and were
responsible for a four-fold increase in wheat-growing areas between
1897 and 1915, allowing production in drier or rust-prone areas, as
well as increasing yields in the established wheat belt. Many of Farrer's
wheats were also tested in overseas wheat-growing countries, where
some were widely grown and popular for commercial production.
Although Farrer's wheats were mostly rust-escaping,
due to early maturity, rather than actually rust-resistant, he did
achieve a measure of rust-resistance in two varieties, and had success
in breeding for resistance against other diseases such as bunt and
flag smut. In addition to his introduction of new wheat breeds, Farrer
made significant contributions to science through his studies on the
inheritable nature of disease resistance, maturity and grain quality
factors, work undertaken long before the rediscovery of Mendelian
principles of genetics.
William Farrer died in 1906, just five years after
his famous Federation wheat made its debut. Like all outstanding
scientists, Farrer kept to his purpose, maintained his enthusiasm
to the end and left a foundation on which other researchers have built
with continued success.
Farrer, like Mawson and Hargrave, has earned a
place on Australia's currency, appearing on the former $2 note. In
addition, his contributions to Australia's agriculture, science and
economy are remembered in the annual award of the Farrer Memorial
Medal for distinguished service to agricultural science and the Farrer
Memorial Research Scholarship, both administered by the Farrer Memorial
Trust of the NSW Department of Agriculture. William Farrer's name
is also perpetuated in schools and streets, a suburb of Canberra,
an electoral district of New South Wales, and several institutions,
including the
Farrer Centre at Charles Sturt University and Farrer Hall at
Monash University.
Reference: Australian Dictionary of Biography
entry (C.W. Wrigley), Vol. 7, pp. 471-473)
Agriculturalist