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Article: Resistos, Regals and Southern Delights;Vegetable Lab's Sweet Potato Breeder Is Hanging Up His Genes
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- November 22, 1990
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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When you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner today you can rest
assured that everything on the table has been the subject of
meticulous, long-term research by the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. If you can eat it, someone at the department studies
it, in numbing detail.
Take Dr. Alfred Jones, for instance, resident sweet potato
breeder at the U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, S.C. Next
June he's hanging up his gene mappers after 29 years of pushing,
prodding, poking and pollinating one of America's most venerable
crops.
At 58, Jones is the department's authority on sweet potatoes,
which automatically makes him a world expert (if not the expert).
This is his last Thanksgiving on the job.