Otis Warren Barrett

Otis Warren Barrett (April 18, 1872 – October 6, 1950) was an American agriculturalist. He spent his early career collecting insects in Mexico, where he became a museum curator and agent for that country's exhibition at the 1900 Paris Exposition. In 1901 Barrett went to Puerto Rico as a US Department of Agriculture entomologist and botanist and afterwards worked with the department's Office of Seed and Plant Introduction. In 1908 he was appointed director of agriculture for the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.

Barrett returned to the Department of Agriculture in 1910 as chief of their experimental stations and horticultural divisions in the Philippines. He became a horticulturalist in the Panama Canal Zone in 1917 and served as the US War Department's agricultural adviser to Liberia in 1920–21. Barrett returned to Puerto Rico with the Department of Agriculture from 1923 to 1929 and afterwards was a horticulturalist at the University of Hawaii. In 1935 he collected a shipment of rotenone-producing plants from Dominica for use in pesticide production.

Biography Otis Warren Barrett was born in Clarendon, Vermont on April 18, 1872; his parents were James and Alice W. Kelley Barrett. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1897, where he was a member of Kappa Sigma fraternity. He afterwards worked with the entomologist JA Pringle in Mexico, collecting insects until 1898. On July 8, 1905 he was appointed assistant in the Office of Seed and Plant Introduction on a salary of $1,800 per annum. It was stated that his services were urgently needed to assist the chief of that office in communicating with other countries regarding possible plant introductions. Barrett held this position until 1908 when he was appointed director of agriculture for the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. By the time his term ended in 1910 he had established a scientific agricultural program in that state. From 1929 until 1930 he was a horticulturalist at the University of Hawaii. Barrett died at his brother Percy's home in Clarendon on October 6, 1950.