Bartley, B. G. D. (Basil G. D.)

Biography

Basil George David Bartley was born in New Delhi, India, on February 14, 1927. He received his secondary education at St. Paul's School, Darjeeling, India, and at the age of fifteen passed the Cambridge School Certificate examination in the first grade. In 1943, he entered the Allahabad Agricultural Institute of the University of Allahabad, India, receiving a bachelor of science degree in agriculture in the first division four years later. He continued scientific studies at Iowa State College (later Iowa State University), which awarded him a master of science in 1948 and a doctorate in 1950. Bartley's main interests at the masters and doctoral levels, respectively, were crop breeding and quantitative inheritance in soybeans.

Bartley's research into the genetic makeup of the cacao plant ( Theobroma cacao L., literally "food of the gods"), the plant from which chocolate is processed, was launched in 1951, when he accepted an offer to become a plant breeder in the Cacao Research Scheme of the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad. His work at the Cacao Research Scheme, which later merged with the University of the West Indies to become the Faculty of Agriculture, focused on breeding cacao for resistance to Witches' Broom, a devastating disease caused by the basidiomycete Crinipellis perniciosa. Of special interest were efforts to combine resistant genes with superior agronomic qualities through a program of inbreeding. Among other projects, Bartley spearheaded establishment of a cacao germplasm collection, participated in a project to describe cultivars, and studied pollinating distances and control of seasonal fruit production. In addition, he participated in research on the Xyloborus-Ceratositis fimbriata complex and Phytophthora palmivora.

Bartley traveled widely during his tenure in Trinidad. In 1952 and 1953, he participated in the Anglo-Colombian Cacao Collecting Expedition, and in 1967 an excursion to Brazil's southwestern state of Amazonia. During the 1960s, he supervised a project that transferred to Nigeria cacao collections made three decades earlier by F. J. Pound in Ecuador and Peru. In addition, he organized a cooperative program between the Cacao Research Scheme and the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agro-Pecuarias of Ecuador that lasted from 1967 to 1973. While working in Trinidad, Bartley also served as a consultant in Venezuela, Surinam, Costa Rica, Jamaica, Grenada, Florida, Puerto Rico, and West Africa.

Bartley's tenure at the University of the West Indies ended in 1970, when he assumed a five-year position as advisor to the Portuguese colonial government of São Tomé and Príncipe. Working mainly on private farms, he conducted a series of experiments into genotype-environmental interaction, one of which studied the effects of altitude on the timing and level of fruitification in cacao trees. In addition, he attempted to rehabilitate old cultivations of cacao through grafting, introduced clones from outside the colony, and established a germplasm collection based on methods learned in Trinidad. While employed by the government of São Tomé and Príncipe, Bartley also traveled to Angola, which was a Portuguese colony at that time, where he studied the expansion of cacao cultivation.

Bartley left Africa in 1975. For the next fifteen years, he worked at the Centro de Pesquisas de Cacao (CEPEC), in Brazil, first in Bahia, then in Belem. At CEPEC, Bartley trained and coordinated staff, established and maintained a cacao germplasm bank, and engaged in a series of studies, among them investigations into the inheritance of selected characteristics and the role that self-incompatibility plays in production. Meanwhile, he also continued efforts to discover genotypes with resistance to Witches' Broom. These included a survey of cacao plants in the Amazon region of Brazil that resulted in a program coordinated by Bartley to collect and preserve germplasm in that region. Under his direction, steps were also taken to use molecular biology analyses to determine the intrinsic characteristics of cacao genotypes and to compare populations.

Bartley's consultancies during his tenure at CEPEC took him to Peru, Costa Rica, Trinidad, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Lucia. In 1979, he visited Costa Rica to draw up a descriptor list for cacao to be used internationally. While at CEPEC, he also traveled to Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, and Miami to visit quarantine facilities and germplasm programs established and maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture and the American Cocoa Research Institute to prevent the spread of Witches' Broom as plants were moved from one country to another.

One of Bartley's major research interests while at CEPEC was a program to improve different varieties of cacao. This included initiation and oversight of pioneering trials conducted at various sites connected with CEPEC. In addition, it entailed development of an ambitious program to determine the behavior of large numbers of crosses planted in semi-commercial blocks. Prominent among the outcomes was an initiative to determine whether cacao varieties could be produced with the characteristics of reduced growth and canopy spread, which would enable intensive cultivation of cacao with reduced inputs.

Bartley resumed travels as a consultant after his employment at CEPEC ended in 1990. In that year, he worked for the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana and took part in discussions on germplasm conservation at the University of Reading in England. In 1991, the American Cocoa Research Institute hired him to verify the identities of cacao accessions in Mayaguez and Miami. The following year he traveled to Ecuador, where he studied genetic resources, surveyed principle growing areas, and trained staff at the Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agro-Pecuarias, and in São Tomé. Other consultancies in 1994 and 1998 took him to Malaysia, the Dominican Republic, and Brazil. In 1993, Bartley established a long-term relationship as consultant to the International Germplasm Database at the University of Reading.

A prolific author, Bartley capped his career in 2004 with the publication of Genetic Diversity of Cacao and Its Utilization (Wallingford, U.K.: CABI).