David Fife

David Alexander Fife (1805–1877) was a Scottish-born Canadian farmer credited with developing the variety of wheat which later became known as Red Fife.

Biography David Alexander Fife was born at Kincardine, Scotland in 1805. In 1820, his family immigrated to Otonabee Township in Peterborough County, Upper Canada, and took up farming.

Development of Red Fife In the early 1840s, the farmers in the Midlands area of Canada West—the new name for Upper Canada after the 1840 Act of Union—grew a winter wheat variety known as Siberian. It had been introduced to Canada in the hope that it would survive the severe Canadian winters. But the Siberian wheat variety was susceptible to rust and its yields were low.

David Fife wrote to a friend in Glasgow asking for samples of good seed wheat. His friend obtained a sample of wheat off a ship from Danzig, Prussia, (now Gdańsk, Poland) and sent it to Fife. As it came to Fife's hand just before spring seeding time, and, not knowing whether it was a fall or spring variety, Mr. Fife decided to sow a part of it that spring, and wait for the result. It proved to be fall wheat as most of it never ripened. Three ears, however, which grew from a single grain did reach maturity.

Red Fife wheat would later be used as the male parent by Dominion Agriculturalist Charles Saunders in development of Marquis wheat, a cultivar that for a time in the early 20th century was grown on 90% of prairie farms.