Hugh Pye
Hugh Pye was an Australian agricultural educator and pioneering wheat breeder. He taught at, and was later principal at Dookie Agricultural College, where he developed more than 100 wheat cultivars aimed at improving drought tolerance and milling quality for low- and medium-rainfall districts. His most successful variety, Currawa, became the second most widely grown wheat in Australia during the 1920s.
Early life
Pye was born in Ascot, now a suburb of Bendigo, to William Marsland Pye, a school headmaster, and Joanna Saunders. He attended Geelong State School, Christ Church Grammar School and Geelong Technical School, then completed two years of an engineering course at the University of Melbourne under parental pressure.His sister was the educator Emmeline Pye.
Career
After teaching science at St Kilda Grammar School, Pye joined Dookie Agricultural College in 1887. Initially interested in pasture improvement, he turned to wheat breeding after corresponding with William Farrer in 1889. Appointed principal of Dookie in 1894, he balanced administration with breeding work until 1916, when a dispute over agricultural education governance prompted him to resign and become Victoria’s government cerealist.Among his notable releases were Improved Steinwedel, Warden, College Purple, Minister and Baldmin. By the mid-1920s, his cultivars Currawa, Major and Minister dominated Victorian sowings, and Major was the most widely grown wheat in New Zealand.
At the time of his death, Pye's varieties accounted for 80% of those grown in Victoria.