William Ormston Backhouse

Who was William Ormston Backhouse?

William Ormston Backhouse was an agriculturalist and geneticist, and a member of the Backhouse family of County Durham in England, several generations of which were influential in the development of horticulture.

William Ormston Backhouse worked for a period of fíve years at the Cambridge Plant Breeding Station and the John Innes Institute, but left Britain to become a geneticist for the Argentine Government. He established a number of wheat-breeding stations in Argentina, then moved to Patagonia, where he reared pigs, grew apples and other fruits and started intensive honey production. He returned to England and bred red-trumpet daffodils at Sutton Court.