Hugh Pye

Hugh Pye (1 January 1860 – 22 August 1942) 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 (released 1912), 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 (née Edwards). He attended Geelong State School, Christ Church Grammar School (where his father was headmaster) and Geelong Technical School, then completed two years of an engineering course at the University of Melbourne under parental pressure.

Among his notable releases were Improved Steinwedel (1899), Warden (1900), College Purple (1901), Minister (1917) and Baldmin (1926).

Later life and legacy Pye retired in 1931. A fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society of the UK, he was remembered as shy and genial whose “sincerity of purpose and intellectual honesty” influenced generations of agronomists.

Personal life On 10 February 1892 Pye married Jane Menzies Tough; the couple had two daughters. He died in Armadale, Melbourne, on 22 August 1942, aged 82, and was cremated.