March 7, 1969

Dr. J. George Harrar

President of the Rockefeller Foundation
111 West 50th Street

New York, New York 16026

Dear Dr. Harrar,

I am writing again to press you with what is now a conrete
suggestion about promoting more innovative approaches to plant
breeding.

This is to ask your foundation people to organize a brain
storming conference on the relevance of new techniques and findings,
which include: l.somatic cell fusion (note Dr. Hildebrandt's article
enclosed), 2. production of haploid genotypes and their subsequent
doubling, 3. rescuing otherwise inviable hybrids by embryo culture
(see Brink and Cooper, Botanical Review Vol. 13, Page 423-541, 1947),
4, biochemical genetic manipulation of plant genotypes in cell culture
aminob&aé to the isolation and testing of clones, 5. the constructive
use of engineered viruses.

I do not necessarily see any panacea out of this and I fully realize =
that the testing and validation of new genotypee is a much more costly v2
and laborious process than the production of new genetic variants.
The field is, however, remarkably backward overall.

I realize that the most effective impetus to such an event would
atise if I wewadable to take a more direct and personal interest in
having it come about. I would then for example attempt to document in
more detail the justification for it. ,

I regret that I am net in a position to do this nor te take too
energetic a role in organizing such a conference but I would be happy
to play at least some part in it if it could be arranged to be held on
this campus. This remark should not discourage you from proceeding in
another direction if the basic idea is a sound one. Another way to get it
going might be to ask Dr. Jamea D. Watson in his capacity as director
of the Biology Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor.

There are, I am gure, at least a half a dozen people of great

intellectual insight who could contribute to thia problem but who have
never yet given more than a moments thought to it. I would see that the

over
program ought to start with a first phase consisting of a kind of
briefing, namely an attempt to lay out the basic problems in systematic
form so that they can be understood by good biologists wiio are not
professional plant breeders. Even if nothing else came out of it euch
an organization of the problem would have an important value of its own.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr