PROFILE: Henry M. Beachell

Henry M. Beachell: Leading 20th century rice breeder and co-pioneer of Asia's Green Revolution in rice

Copyright � 2009 by E. A. Kral

Many researchers in all fields of knowledge have offered humankind valuable contributions during long, successful careers. And a few, such as chemists Pierre and Marie Curie and physicist Albert Einstein, became renowned worldwide for enduring pioneer efforts

For various reasons, exceptional contributors in the agricultural sciences are not often widely known outside their specialty. One example is Iowa native Norman E. Borlaug, a 1970 Nobel Prize recipient for increasing wheat production in many countries. Another is Nebraska native Henry M. Beachell, a rice breeder. Both were jointly featured in a centennial supplement to Agronomy Journal, Vol 100 (2008) as two giants in the American Society of Agronomy's first century.

While wheat is an important food crop in the world, especially in North America and Europe, rice is also one of the most important. As stated in the entry on rice in World Book Encyclopedia, Vol 16 (2005), "More than half the people of the world eat this grain as the main part of their meals. Nearly all the people who depend on rice for food live in Asia."

Agronomist Henry Beachell, during a career of more than 70 years, helped modernize rice breeding in the United States after 1931 with the U.S. Department of Agriculture based at the Texas A & M Research Station at Beaumont by development of nine varieties of rice and establishment of the nation's first rice research laboratory.

And after late 1963, while with the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and then Indonesia, he co-pioneered the high-yielding IR8 rice that substantially increased rice production in several Asian nations, and helped reduce the chances for widespread famine.

The significance of Beachell's contributions was confirmed by numerous honors, including the John Scott Award of the City of Philadelphia in 1969, the Bronze Tower Service Award of the Government of South Korea in 1978, and the Japan Prize in 1987. Additionally, he was co-recipient with IRRI colleague Gurdev S. Khush of the prestigious World Food Prize in 1996.

His early years had prepared him for an agronomy career. At first, he lived on family farms in eastern Nebraska near Waverly, where he was born, then near Valparaiso, where he had cultivated corn with a horse-drawn cultivator. About the age of eight, he became fascinated with a steam engine and other exhibits of the University of Nebraska College of Agriculture at the Nebraska State Fair in the capital city of Lincoln, and independently built toys, including small replicas of farm machines.

In 1917, the family relocated to a farm eight miles from Grant in southwestern Nebraska, where a small tractor was used for plowing and planting wheat. He attended Rural School District 84, and spent his spare time at home by reading and making toys from scrap lumber and rods. At Perkins County High School in Grant, he lived with families closer to school, and held many kinds of jobs. He took two years of vocational agriculture training as well as the usual school curriculum, then after graduation in 1924, worked on his father's farm for a year.

After enrolling in the UNL College of Agriculture in the fall of 1925, Henry took several courses in entomology, and worked in the animal pathology department, caring for experimental Guinea pigs, rabbits and chickens used by the distinguished veterinary scientist Leunis Van Es for the study of diseases. Two years later, he worked in the summer and fall for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, looking for corn borers in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin cornfields, then for a short time helped the Perkins County Agent at Grant.

With a letter of encouragement from Edgar A. Burnett, Dean of the UNL College of Agriculture, he returned to UNL in February 1928, worked at the agronomy farm on corn, wheat, and soils studies, and held a job as seed analyst at the Nebraska State Seed Laboratory in the State Capitol. The following fall, he was a team member for grain judging, grading, and plant identification at the Chicago International Hay and Grain Show, where he placed first in grain judging. He was also a lab assistant for Prof T. H. Gooding in the Agronomy Department.

After earning his UNL bachelor's degree in 1930, Beachell began graduate work in the Agronomy Department at Kansas State University, studying under Prof John H. Parker, who he remembered had taught the valuable philosophy that "one must work with not only research associates, but with the farmer, the processor, and the ultimate consumer." And to be adaptable to environments at employment stations.

Accumulating sufficient coursework by March 1931, though not finishing his master's degree thesis in plant breeding until 1934, he applied for a wheat breeder position at Washington State College in Pullman. But the job was given to his friend and former UNL classmate Orville A. Vogel, who later earned major national awards for developing the first commercially successful semi-dwarf wheat in North America.

There were, however, three rice breeding jobs available along the Gulf Coast, so in 1931 Henry took a rice research position with the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the Texas A & M Research Station at Beaumont, where he remained for 32 years.

At the time, rice improvement mainly involved the testing and selecting of promising varieties from strains grown in foreign countries but introduced in the United States, with choices made for adaptability to local soil and climate, yield and quality.

Moreover, the Texas rice crop was harvested with binders, shocked in the field, threshed by stationary threshers, put into gunny sacks, and stored in open warehouses. But as the labor for this method became more expensive, farmers had difficulty making a profit from raising rice.

With the introduction of the combine to the rice-growing region in the 1940s, farmers wanted varieties more suitable to mechanized harvesting than the types earlier grown, thus adding another breeding factor.

It was Beachell who began the modern development of hybrid rice varieties by crossbreeding to obtain desired hereditary traits. Sometimes, about two to three hundred varieties were tested for economic and yield value. Typically, it took about seven years before seed reached the yield test, and 12 years or more before a variety could be considered a marketable seed. And after success in the field, it had to pass cooking and eating tests before finally reaching the market.

In the early 1940s, Henry released Texas Patna, the first rice variety developed from his breeding program, which was a cross between a variety grown in India and one of the old American rices, and could withstand punishment from bad weather. And until 1963, while he was director of breeding at Beaumont, a total of nine new varieties were eventually developed that had changed the U.S. rice industry, since early-maturing varieties were adapted to combine harvesting and the use of nitrogen fertilizer to increase per acre yield.

Funding for rice research was in short supply from state and federal sources, so in July 1943, Henry was instrumental in forming the Texas Rice Improvement Association through his relationships with farmers, farm organizations, millers, and other processors of rice. Also important was the establishment of the Rice Quality Laboratory at the Beaumont Research Station in 1955, the first of its kind in the nation. It was created to serve as a worldwide resource for rice quality evaluation, in addition to supporting rice breeding programs throughout the United States.

By the mid-l950s, Beachell's varieties comprised the vast majority of the estimated 50,000 acres of rice produced annually in Texas, and from 1954 until the late 1960s, his varieties were the basis for nearly 90 percent of all U.S. long-grain rice production. And a sizeable rice industry had been established as a result of local and foreign demand for high quality seed, which included Central and South America.

According to a September 18, 1955 Houston Chronicle news article, the Beaumont Research Station had international influence. A chief agronomist for Indonesia who had worked with Beachell reported more than 12 million acres of rice in that republic were being planted to a new variety which was a cross with Bluebonnet 50 (released by Henry in 1950) and one of the native Indonesia varieties. It produced a high yield and was a good tasting strain.

Beachell's involvement as a consultant internationally started during a 1949 visit to British Guiana, where farming methods remained from ancient times, with workers reaping and winnowing by hand. During a summer 1954 tour of South America, he obtained information about milling and cooking quality, disease resistance, and other traits of rice grown from seed furnished by Texas farmers. In 1955, he lectured at a convention in India attended by agricultural leaders from 26 Asiatic and European nations. And in March 1958, he hosted at the Beaumont Station a group of international agriculture experts that represented France, Greece, India, Pakistan, Spain, and Thailand.

An innovative experimenter, Henry had been aware of the concept of dwarfism established in other crops such as sorghum and wheat, and hoped the same could apply to rice for the benefit of farmers in Texas and other southern states. In 1955, he visited Orville Vogel at Washington State University, for Vogel was in the process of developing a semi-dwarf wheat variety that was released six years later. He had used genetic material from a Japanese wheat.

Application of the dwarf concept in rice research occurred after the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations jointly initiated in 1960 the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) headquartered in Los Banos, Philippines, about 40 miles south of Manila.

The first IRRI rice breeder was Peter Jennings, who had earlier spent several months learning about rice at the Beaumont Research Station. In the summer of 1962, he brought Henry to the Philippines for consultation, and that same year Jennings started experimentation with a short-statured variety from Taiwan. After discovery of potential for breeding an improved semi-dwarf rice, he informed his officials as well as Beachell in Beaumont.

Soon Henry Beachell was hired by IRRI to serve as its second rice breeder, then at 57 years of age, he relocated to the Philippines in October 1963, and received the genetic materials from Jennings, who departed for study leave.

In the early years, the IRRI demonstrated it had educational as well as research objectives, for plant breeders from other nations spent a year gaining practical experience and training in selection of improved varieties. Its staff represented some 14 countries, and they worked to catalog every known rice strain in the world, at the time an estimated ten thousand varieties from 73 nations. Those with promise were tested in laboratories and on its experimental farm, then tested all over Asia under varying local conditions.

Then, too, recalled Henry at a 1997 reunion, "We interviewed farmers and scientists across Asia to understand why rice yields in the tropics were so low. The main problem was the structure of the tropical rice plant--tall, with weak stems. When fertilized, the plant �lodged' or fell over, and production ceased."

And just as he did at Beaumont, Henry established a rice quality laboratory at IRRI, and trained the technicians to manage it, a major contribution because people in different countries have varying preferences in cooking and eating, from sticky to drier-cooking. Such knowledge permitted elimination at the start of any genetic lines that possessed unacceptable qualities.

When Beachell began his rice research at Los Banos in late 1963, he selected from the third generation of plants earlier provided by Jennings almost 200 of the best individual plants. Seeds from each plant were sown in individual rows for the fourth generation, then for the fifth generation he selected a single plant from Row 288, which was the third one. It was a cross of an Indonesia variety called Peta, which had erect leaves and stood up well, and a semi-dwarf variety from Taiwan, called Dee-geo-won-gen.

Its seed was grown to produce the basic seed stock for the sixth generation, which was a semi-dwarf rice. It had a short, stiff straw, and its erect leaves allowed for more exposure to sunlight, making it less dependent on daylength and permitting fanners to grow it around the world. It ripened in much less time than previous varieties, was able to resist lodging when much fertilizer was applied, and there was more resistance to several types of diseases. Then two more generations were developed.

While the new strain more than doubled yield potential of traditional rice varieties, and was tested throughout Asia in 1965, much of the population did not like its eating quality. However, the IRRI seed committee met in 1966, called it IR8, and released it that November.

As Beachell recalled later, "We needed to move fast as possible. There was not enough rice to go around. Having rice was more important than grain quality....We knew its limitations, but also knew we had a plant type. IR8 would be the prototype for future varieties. We decided to spread it."

The development of IR8 was significant for Asian agriculture, and it began the Green Revolution in rice. The press called it the miracle rice. But even more research was needed.

During his nine years at the Los Banos location, Beachell not only developed the high-yielding IR8 but it was a parent to his other varieties such as IR20, IR22, IR24, and IR28. He was also a consultant to scientists at other Asian nations, as well as a mentor to fellow IRRI colleagues such as Gurdev Khush, a native of India who trained at the University of California at Davis and arrived at Los Banos in 1967.

Khush continued the findings of Beachell by leading an almost ten-year effort in the development of IR36, which matured within 105 days, compared to 125 days for IR8 and 150 to 170 days for traditional types. Other IR36 improvements over the earlier semi-dwarf varieties included genetic resistance to a dozen insects and diseases, which reduced farmers' reliance on pesticides, and resistance to such environmental obstacles as drought and nitrogen-deficient soils. Also, its slender grain was preferred in many countries.

After Henry reached age 65, he did not wish to abide by the mandatory retirement policy at Los Banos, so in July 1972, he was appointed a rice breeder on the staff of IRRI at Bogor, Indonesia, where he assisted the government in improving food crops and training young scientists in agricultural research until 1982. During this time, rice production in Indonesia increased more than 100 percent because of the adoption of early maturing, disease and insect resistant semi-dwarf rice varieties.

The improved varieties developed under Beachell and Khush became planted on about 70 percent of the world's rice-growing land and not only doubled worldwide rice production but fed about 700 million more people than traditional varieties would feed. Moreover, an additional $1 billion income was provided to Asian farmers, who grow over 90 percent of the world's rice. And it all happened while the population of rice consumers was growing more than two percent annually, and the availability of rice production land remained stable.

Upon returning to Texas in the spring of 1982, he remained active until beyond 95 years of age. He took a consulting position with a business in the community of Alvin that in a decade became RiceTec, the only firm in the United States engaged in the development of hybrid rice varieties. At the same time, he also collaborated with researchers at Cornell University at Ithaca, New York and the U.S. Department of Agriculture at Stuttgart, Arkansas in the development of a molecular genetic seed bank of rice.

His long career and enthusiasm was noted in newspaper articles. An April 13, 1987 Houston Chronicle article quoted him as saying, "The reason I've stayed with it this long is out of satisfaction of having helped the livelihood of people." And a December 15, 1996 Dallas Morning News feature that mentioned his learning about the DNA of rice also stated, "Indeed, those who have known him well say Dr. Beachell, often called a walking encyclopedia of agriculture by his colleagues, doesn't seem to want to stop learning."

Aside from the previously-mentioned awards, Henry received many other noteworthy honors, including election as Fellow in the American Society of Agronomy in 1961 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1969, honorary doctorates from Seoul National University in 1971 and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1972, and distinguished service awards from Kansas State University in 1974 and Texas A & M University in 1981.

Endowed scholarships in Henry's name were established at Kansas State University in 1997, Texas A & M University in 1997, the American Society of Agronomy in 1998, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2006. The Monsanto Corporation established an international fellowship program in honor of Henry Beachell and Norman Borlaug administered by Texas A & M University in 2009.

In addition to sources already cited, an important biographical account is Anwar Dil ed, Rice to Feed the World: Life and Work of H. M. Beachell (Intercultural Forum, 2001). Also helpful is a history of Beachell's life in a privately printed 158-page booklet in 2007 by nephew Roy F. Stohler of Concord, Nebraska. An obituary was published in the December 28, 2006 New York Times, and there is an entry in Who Was Who in America, Vol 18 (2007).

Archival materials about Henry M. Beachell may be found at the International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos, Philippines, the Godfrey Library of the Soil and Crop Department at Texas A & M University at College Station, the RiceTec at Alvin, Texas, and the Archives and Special Collections, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries.

Born on September 21, 1906 at Waverly, Nebraska, one of seven children of William and Alice Degler Beachell, Henry died December 13, 2006 at 100 years of age. Preceded in death by his parents and wives Ena Everton (l936-1982) and Edna Mary Payne (1983-2004), he was survived by a sister, a sister-in-law, two grandchildren, and many nieces and nephews. Interment was at South Park Cemetery in Pearland, Texas.

For more information, consult "900 Famous Nebraskans" on the Internet at www.nsea.org or www.gagecountymuseum.org or www.nebpress.com.

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PROFILE: Henry M. Beachell

Henry M. Beachell: Leading 20th century rice breeder and co-pioneer of Asia's Green Revolution in rice