George McMillan Darrow (1889-1983), America's foremost authority on small fruits, was born in Springfield Vt., on Feb. 2, 1889. He was educated at Middlebury College, Cornell Univ., and John Hopkins Univ. His entire professional career spanning 46 years from 1911 to 1957, was spent with the USDA (U. S. Dept of Agriculture). Beginning in 1928, he was the acknowledged leader of small fruit investigations for the USDA and was appointed the administrative head of the Small Fruit's Research Section in 1945. Darrow was noted for his extensive knowledge of fruit crops, especially the strawberry. He published a series of authoritative and concise farmers' bulletins on small fruit production, which he frequently revised. A prolific writer, Darrow eventually published more than 200 research or review articles, bulletins, and book chapters.

Darrow is best known for his breeding, genetics, germplasm, and disease resistance studies involving the strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry. Many of his cultivars established new standards of excellence for their industries and were widely used as parents. The strawberry cultivar BLAKEMORE, his first release (1929) set the standard for fruit firmness and quickly became the most important cultivar in the United States, a position it held for 20 years. Strawberry and Blueberry breeding work was greatly enhanced by the cooperative state-federal relationships established by Darrow. As a testament to his outstanding leadership capabilitiies, Darrow organized teams to study red stele root rot resistance, virus indexing and certified plant production of the strawberry.

Biographical Data

George M. Darrow principal horticulturalist in charge of Small Fruit Research from1927-1957 and of all Decidious Fruit Investigations of the Bureau of Plant from 1946-1954. Middlebury College, A. 1910, Cornell University., A. M. in Horticulture, 1911 John Hopkins University, Ph.D in Plant Physiology, 1927. Employed by the USDA 1911-1957, except for military service 1918-1919. Married Grace Chapman 1919. George and Grace settled in Glendale Maryland in 1919 and both lived there until they died; Grace in 1974 and George in 1982. Dr Darrow continued to be active even after he retired. In fact he didn't begin collecting and breeding daylilies until 1957 the year he retired from the USDA. By 1958 he had collected 300 daylily varieties George eventually resistered around 50 daylily cultivars all in the 1970s. He kept on hybridizing up untill his death in 1982.