Mark A. Carleton

Who was Mark A. Carleton?

Mark Alfred Carleton was an American botanist and plant pathologist, most notable for his introduction of hard red wheats and durum wheats from Russia into the American wheatbelt.

Carleton was born near Jerusalem, Monroe County, Ohio, but the family moved to Cloud County, Kansas in 1876 where he worked on his father's farm. He attended Kansas State Agricultural College, graduating in 1887 with his bachelor's. For the next two years he taught natural history at Garfield University in Wichita. When funds ran out to pay him, he returned to Kansas State Agricultural College and acquired his master's degree in botany and plant cultivation. While there, he worked with A.S. Hitchcock on the study of plant rusts and published a number of papers, which, with Hitchcock's endorsement, got Carleton a job as an assistant pathologist in the Division of Vegetable Physiology and Pathology of the United States Department of Agriculture.

While at the USDA, Carleton continued his study of wheat rusts and noticed, inter alia, that the turkey red wheat grown in Kansas by the Mennonites survived where other varieties succumbed to wheat rusts.