Rutger remembered for rice research

J. Neil Rutger died on June 6, 2024, at the age of 90. He was a breeder with the United States Department of Agriculture and an emeritus adjunct professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.

A graveside service with military honors will be held at 10 a.m. Friday, June 21, at the Woodland Cemetery on West Street. A reception will follow at 11 a.m. at the American Legion Yolo Post 77 Hall, 523 Bush St., Woodland.

Rutger was born to Frank Russell Rutger and Jennie Marie Pearce Rutger on March 3, 1934, on a farm in Noble, Ill., the last in a family of eight children. He rode a school-issued horse to attend a one-room elementary school where he was the only student. As a teenager, he rode his horse 3 miles to the bus stop, left his horse in a farmer’s barn, and then rode the school bus 10 miles to attend Noble High School, from which he graduated in 1950.

In 1954, he enlisted in the U.S. Army which included service in Regensburg, Germany as a track-vehicle mechanic. He earned sharpshooter and expert marksmanship badges and the Good Conduct Medal and was honorably discharged. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserves for six years, achieving the rank of Sergeant/SP5.

He attended the University of Illinois, receiving his B.S. degree in agricultural science in 1960. He earned an M.S. in agronomy in 1962 and his Ph.D. in genetics in 1964, both at UC Davis. His research focused on malting barley genetics, working with Charles W. Schaller in the Agronomy Department. He then joined the faculty at Cornell University as an Extension agronomist.

Around 1969, he returned to Davis as a rice geneticist for the USDA, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Agronomy and Range Science. As a member of the graduate group in genetics, he trained 12 M.S. and 12 Ph.D. graduate students. His former students have occupied responsible rice genetics and breeding positions in Arkansas, California, Brazil, China, Egypt, Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. He also taught a plant breeding course when there was no department faculty available.

Renaissance in rice breeding

Rutger used induced mutation breeding to rapidly achieve new cultivars. His work on semidwarf cultivars, early maturity and grain characteristics had national and international impact. In 1976, he developed the first semidwarf table-rice cultivar in the U.S., Calrose 76, which had a 20-percent yield advantage over tall cultivars. This was followed by another semidwarf, M-101, developed by using Calrose 76 in a cross-breeding program. Calrose 76 became the ancestral source of semidwarfism for numerous additional varieties developed by rice breeders in California, Australia and Egypt. These semidwarfs resulted in farm-yield increases of 20 percent and tens of millions of dollars of increased income for rice growers. This work was widely recognized by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna as an example of successful use of induced mutation in plant breeding.

For several years, Rutger also served as the USDA location leader for Davis-based USDA research scientists. He was a temporary assistant area director, based in Albany, Calif., before he took a similar, permanent position with the USDA in Stoneville, Miss. Later, he was the founding director of the Dale Bumpers Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark. In 2003, Rutger established the National Genetic Stocks Oryza Collection to develop and accumulate specialized genetic stocks for the American rice research community.

Rutger received high honors from the USDA and the California Rice industry. After retirement, he returned to California and lived in Woodland. During his retirement, he held an adjunct faculty position in the Department of Plant Sciences.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial donations be made to the Woodland Sunrise Rotary Foundation, P.O. Box 8876, Woodland, CA 95776.