1966] LOUIS C. YOUNG HONORED 2 9 7

LOUIS C. YOUNG HONORED

It is an honor and a pleasure to present Louis C. Young for Honorary Life Membership in The Potato Association of America.

Louis Church Young was born in Keswick, New Brunswick, Canada December 30, 1901, He graduated from High School in Stanley. In 1918 he received a teachers license from the N.B. Teachers College. In 1922 he graduated from Mount Allison University with a B.A. and in 1927

298 AMERICAN POTATO JOURNAL [Vol. 43

graduated from the Ontario Agricultural College with a B.S.A. In 1939 he received his M.S. from the University of Minnesota. His thesis was entitled "The Value of Cultivated and Wild Species of Solanum in a Potato Breeding Program," and the work was conducted under Dr. Fred Krantz.

In 1928 he married Mary Alcoe. They have two children, Margaret (Mrs. D. V. Waldon), presently living in Dalhousie, N.B., and Donald, with the Canada Department of Agriculture in Fredericton.

In 1927 he accepted employment with the Canada Department of Agriculture in Fredericton as a Horticulturist. From 1929 to 1959 he served as Senior Officer in Horticulture: During this period, the Horti- culture program developed from a one-man to a five-man program with major emphasis on potatoes, strawberries, blueberries and apples.

All of Lou's research was not restricted to potatoes. His early work showed that corky core of apples could be controlled by the application of boron. He was the first to demonstrate that brown heart of swedes could be controlled by spraying boron on the foliage under conditions in which soil application had proven ineffective. His cultural studies on the growth and development of apples on the extremely shallow soils of the St. John River Valley were basic to the establishment of the present industry in that valley.

Lou has been associated with potato breeding since 1934 and since 1959 has devoted his full energy to this work. Since 1959 he has served as Head, Potato Breeding Section at Fredericton, New Brunswick. This Section is made up of 11 Research Officers representing many disciplines, working together with the overall objective of potato improvement through breeding. The development of the team approach and the broad area covered within the section are a tribute to Mr. Young's foresight.

Early in his work with potatoes he developed methods for growing potatoes in the greenhouse for pollination purposes and his findings re- garding the flowering response of the potato to artificial light are well known and used internationally. He has developed an improved system for conducting field trials to evaluate potatoes for field resistance to late blight. This system enables differentiation between resistance due to genetic factors and resistance associated with maturity, fertilizer practices and other physiological factors. He has been closely associated with the develop- ment and introduction of the following potato varieties: Keswick (1951), Huron (1957), Avon (1958), Fundy (1958), Hunter (1961), Sable (1964) and Grand Falls (1965).

Mr. Young has published many research papers (eight of which appear in the American Potato Journal) and has prepared numerous bulletins for general distribution.

He has served on the Editorial, Policy, Breeding and Genetics, and International Relations Committees of the Potato Association of America. He served as general chairman of the Association's Annual Meeting in 1959 and served as Vice-President and President-Elect previous to be- coming President of the Potato Association in 1963.

---Prepared by Donald Young and presented by Walter C. Sparks in his absence