My father, Eric Roberts, who has died aged 86, was a renowned seed and crop scientist who advanced the understanding of plant breeding and genetic resource conservation.
His work showed that long-term seed storage was not only feasible but also relatively inexpensive, and he played a key role in setting up and managing seed banks. In the mid-1970s he chaired the expert group on seed storage of the International Board For Plant Genetic Resources, which was aiming to conserve crop diversity. There are now more than 1,400 seed banks all over the world.
Born and raised in Welshpool, Montgomeryshire (now administered as part of Powys), Eric was the son of John Roberts and his wife, Elizabeth (nee Ryle), known as Peggy. John worked for the Midland bank, but died when Eric was 11, whereupon the bank paid for him to attend Lucton school near Leominster, Herefordshire. While waiting to be called up for national service, Eric took a temporary job as a laboratory technician. He proved to have a great aptitude for preparing experiments and for botanical drawings.
Although he had fairly poor exam grades, Manchester University agreed to offer him a place to study botany if the army would defer his posting. My father told the army that he had been offered a university place and then told the university that the army had agreed to defer his call up. This ruse worked.
After graduating with a 2:1 and spending a year learning about plant breeding in Cambridge, he took a job as a plant breeder with the Colonial Office. In 1955 he married Dorothy Mollart, a science teacher, whom he had met at university. They then spent eight years at a rice breeding station in Rokupr, Sierra Leone.
There the couple had many responsibilities: Eric found that he had to act as returning officer for elections and vaccinate children. In his free time he took up art and photography. He built his own darkroom and took many fantastic pictures with his new Leica camera.
In 1963, when I was nearing school age and my brother, Ian, was about to be born, our parents returned to Britain, where my father took up a lectureship in horticulture at his old university. He left after five years when he was appointed professor of crop production in the agriculture department at Reading University. He subsequently became head of the department and dean of the faculty of agriculture and horticulture. In 1982, he was appointed the university’s first pro-vice-chancellor.
He retired in 1995, but returned to help develop the university’s agriculture submission to the UK Research Assessment Exercise (1996), which monitored standards in higher education. Eric was appointed OBE in 2000 for his services to agricultural research.
In retirement my parents moved to Falmouth, Cornwall, where Eric enjoyed sailing and his passion for art. There he made many friends, among them local artists, including Sir Terry Frost. Eric and Dorothy loved to entertain with good wine and my mother’s West African groundnut chop recipe.
Eric is survived by Dorothy, by Ian and me, and by two grandchildren, Ella and Thomas.
