A WESTERN Australian plant breeder whose research established lupins, subterranean clover and yellow serradella as feed crops, plus helped uncork the Margaret River wine region, was recognised in yesterday's Australia Day Honours.
Dr John Sylvester Gladstones, 90, of Carine, was promoted to an Officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
His AO was for distinguished service to primary industry, particularly agriculture and viticulture and as an author.
Mr Gladstones had been made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1986 for his plant breeding work.
He became a world authority during 40 years of research which established narrow-leafed lupins as a viable stock feed crop, first as a researcher with The University of Western Australia (UWA) and later as the primary plant breeder for 20 years with the then WA Agriculture Department.
While working as an Agricultural Science lecturer and researcher at UWA, Mr Gladstones published scientific papers in 1965 and 1966, pointing out the soil and climatic similarities between the Bordeaux wine region in France and the Wilyabrup region between Dunsborough and Margaret River.
He was the first person to suggest wine grapes could be grown successfully and premium wines produced in the Margaret River region and wine industry pioneers Tom Cullity with Vasse Felix and Kevin and Diana Cullen with Cullen Wines took notice.
The JS Gladstones Trophy presented at the prestigious Mount Barker Wine Show since 1978 for the wine displaying the Best and Most Distinctive Regional Character is named after him.
Mr Gladstones grew up in Guildford, Perth, where his father was a teacher at Guildford Grammar School, so he and his brother attended there and the only real rural connection was his grandfather Harold Gladstones, a surveyor who laid out Wagin township in 1898, was Wagin mayor 1931-37 and again 1940-46.
"He farmed at Tincurrin - one of the blocks he surveyed - and he had a very strong feeling for the land," Mr Gladstones said.
"I inherited some of that I think.
"I started growing radishes in the garden from the age of about 5 and it (growing things) became a bit of a mania from then on."
He enrolled for an agricultural science course at UWA and completed his doctorate there is 1959, returning to the university after a year in Canada to take up a temporary position that quickly turned into a permanent position as a lecturer and 11 years of world-renowned research into crop lupins.
"Professor Underwood (Eric Underwood, Dean of the science faculty and then director of UWA's Institute of Agriculture), invited me to come back and fill in," Mr Gladstones recalled.
"I had done my post graduate work there on lupins and he was keen to continue with that and so was I.
"The work with lupins was primarily focused on developing a stock feed that could also improve the soil - at that time there was no locally sourced vegetable protein (across southern Australia).
"There were lupins grown as green manure, but in orchards and vineyards at that stage, not as a crop plant.
"Houghtons (Wines in the Swan Valley), where Mr Gladstones later had a trial lupins plot, was one, growing them between every second row (of vines) and ploughing them in at full flowering which was their source of nitrogen for the vines.
"There was also the WA Blue (also known as sandplain lupin) which was a different species of lupin that was sort of naturalised along the coastal area - there was a lot of it in the Geraldton area and they used it for sheep grazing.
"From that it was known that lupins were adapted to WA's sandy soils.
"We needed the legume and we needed something for stock feed.
"What I was set to do was find out what could be done to develop a crop type of lupin - to see which was the best adapted type and work with that one - that settled on the narrow-leafed lupin."
Mr Gladstones said some of the research work related to developing sweet lupin varieties and soft seeded so they would take up moisture readily and germinate without delay, had already been done in Germany.
"But all the rest of the things, like non-shattering pods in particular and earlier enough flowering and maturing for the Wheatbelt - because all the original varieties were too late flowering to be adapted as potential crops for the Wheatbelt," Mr Gladstones said.
"I had to try and find those characteristics and breed them in.
"As it happened, I did find them, both as natural mutations in the field, so they were the basis for the first crop varieties - that was Uniwhite in 1967, Uniharvest in 1970 and Unicrop in1973.
"They were all developed while I was at the university, then I transferred in 1971 to the State department (Department of Agriculture, where he remained as primary plant breeder until 1991, taking early retirement in preference to moving into administrative roles) and the breeding took off from there."
His work establishing subterranean clover varieties as feed crops in WA was much more dependent on a chance encounter, than to scientific research in the early days, Mr Gladstones said.
"Subterranean clover was a personal sideline at the start," he admitted.
In 1950 UWA Institute of Agriculture colleagues had discovered a natural selection strain of clover growing alongside the Geraldton-Mullewa Rd at Moonyoonooka and subsequent trials at Merredin research station and across the Wheatbelt proved its earlier flowering, higher seed yield suitability for cropping and it became known as the Geraldton variety, indicating suitable strains were out there.
One Sunday while walking in South Guildford he recognised a different looking clover that had obviously been growing there for some time.
"This variety (Geraldton) had only been released commercially the year before, so it was obvious it could not have come from that," Mr Gladstones said.
"So I started looking around the place (for more varieties).
"I spent three years going around the old settled areas of the South West and looking in places like sportsgrounds, showgrounds, railway sidings, that sort of thing, looking where else clover might be and it turned up there was a whole lot of different varieties that must have come in (to WA) in the early years.
"We've never quite worked out how and why - but they were scattered all around.
"Those formed the main basis for the sub-clover breeding - I worked together with Dr Clive Francis who was my first honours student, on the breeding of the sub-clover (cultivars).
"It was a very interesting and satisfying thing, I was involved in it for 25 years or so."
Helping establish and define the Margaret River wine region was "something of a hobby" when compared to his work on stock feed crops, Mr Gladstones admitted.
His days as a university student enjoying a few drinks with mates "might also have had a bit to do with it", he said of his interest in viticulture and wines - he has been a respected wine judge.
But there were some other connections with the South West and the wine industry that had peeked his interest.
His family had a holiday house on the Blackwood River at Augusta, so school holidays and later holidays were spent there.
"I knew the South West climate and the soils very well from an early age," he said.
Also, legendary Houghton's winemaker, Jack Mann, was a family friend and some of Mr Gladstones' early lupin trial crops where grown at Houghton's Swan Valley vineyards.
Since 1992 he has published four books mostly dealing with the link between climate, environment and grape growing for premium wine making.
His book 'Viticulture and the Environment' became something of a 'bible' for Margaret River region wine growers in the 1990s.
What he said would be his last book was published last year.
It provides a detailed comparative analysis of the climates of WA, Australian and prominent overseas wine regions and the grape varieties that do best in each.
It is available through phpublishings@gmail.com.
In yesterday's Honours list Mr Gladstones' achievements and recognition were listed as induction into the Royal Agricultural Society Western Australia's Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2000, WA Citizen of the Year (Professions category) in 1992, winner Clunies Ross National Science and Technology Award Plant Breeding, William Farrer Memorial Medal, 1975 and Centenary Medal for service to researching lupins, pasture legumes and viticulture, 2001.
His wine awards include Cullen Award for Excellence, WA Wine Industry, 2017, Maurice O'Shea Award, McWilliams Wines, 2008 and Sheraton Jack Mann Award, WA Wine Press Club, 1987.
He is also an honorary life member of the American Society for Ecology and Viticulture, 2002.
Another Western Australian appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia was Georgina (Gina) Hope Rinehart of West Perth for distinguished service to the mining sector, to the community through philanthropic initiatives and to sport as a patron.
Executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting Pty Ltd since 1992 and of Roy Hill Holdings and S Kidman and Co, Ms Rinehart also heads the Georgina Hope Foundation, which she founded, supporting elite swimmers among other philanthropic activities.
She is a major supporter of the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) and helped provide its first two jet aircraft, as well as being a major personal donor to help the RFDS during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ms Rinehart also supports hospitals and a variety of children's, regional and humanitarian causes in Australia and South East Asia.
She is patron and a major supporter of Swimming Western Australia since 1992, as well as patron and supporter of Swimming Australia since 2012, Volleyball Australia since 2013, Rowing Australia since 2016 and artistic swimming in WA and nationally since 2015.
Western Australians with a connection to agriculture and the regions who were awarded Medals in the Order of Australia yesterday included RASWA immediate past president Paul Lewin Carter and Wagin Woolorama trade fair founding stalwart and stud Merino breeder Malcolm Leslie Edward.
Mr Carter, from Hillarys, was awarded the OAM for service to the community through a range of roles.
A RASWA member since 1982, Mr Carter has been a RASWA councillor since 1994, a former chairman of a range of committees, was founder of the Perth Royal Food Awards in 2017 and RASWA president 2017-2021.
A financial planner, Mr Carter has also been a member of administrative committees with Girl Guides WA, including as a former chairman of the finance committee, since 1992.
He has been an Old Haleians' Association committee member since 2008 and was president 2013-15.
Mr Carter also helped establish Claremont Men's Shed.
Mr Edward, principal of Belmont Park Poll Merino stud, Wagin, was awarded an OAM for service to the stud Merino industry and to the Wagin community.
He is a long-term member of Wagin Agricultural Society and a past chairman and was a founding organiser of Wagin Woolorama trade fair in 1972 and has been a past president and vice president of the organising committee.
Mr Edward is also a life member of Wagin Lions Club, having joined in 1968 and been president in 1974, 1986 and 2004.
He is former chairman of Wagin Bicentennial Committee, a former Land Conservation Committee member and a former member of Wagin Bushfire Committee.
Professionally, Mr Edward is a life member of the Stud Merino Breeders' Association of WA and was its vice president 1993-96, president 1996-99 and a committee member since 1978.
He served three terms as president of the Great Southern Merino Breeders' Association, has been a member of WA Farmers' Federation livestock committee since 1999 and is a former wool section vice president and has been a member of State advisory bodies including Footrot, Ovine Johnes Disease body, Sire Reference Scheme and State Sheep Liaison Committee.
Mr Edward has judged Merinos at the Queensland State Sheep Show, Blackall, Melbourne Sheep Show and Adelaide Royal Show and Crystal Brook Sheep Show in South Australia.
He was an Australian Association of Stud Merino Breeders' committee Member 1993-99 and 2009 and through Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) a National Merino Challenge committee member 2015-16.
Earlier, he was involved in the initial set up of the Australia Sheep Breeding Values breeding program and an instigator of debate with AWI about the national wool stockpile.
Mr Edward was treasurer of the 7th World Merino Conference in Perth and a delegate at previous conferences in Melbourne, New Zealand, Hungary, France and Uruguay.
He donated stud rams to China 1987 as part of a government-to-government project and visited farms in China in 1988.
Mr Edward is a past president of the Great Southern Merino Field Days Committee and Great Southern Sheep Breeders' Association and won the Rural Achiever Award in 2010.
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