The man who pioneered the field of genetic engineering for food crops has died. Raymond Carlyle Valentine, professor in the former Department of Agronomy and Range Science at UC Davis, was a visionary scientist who found new ways to increase crop yield and link academic research with commercial potential. He died March 9 in Davis, at the age of 86.

Valentine was born in 1936 into a family of Illinois sharecroppers who lived in a log cabin. When asked about the beginning of his interest in plants, he would tell a story: His family rented farmland that he called “marginal,” but it included a 20-acre strip of relatively productive bottom-land near a levee, where they grew corn. Valentine worked his first job at the age of 5, starting at daybreak and using a short-handled hoe that his father sharpened by hand to dig out cockleburs from within the rows of corn. As the sun beat down, the razor-like corn leaves would turn the sweat on his hands red with blood. For that, he earned 35 cents a day – “good money back then… (but) I thought, if I ever get a chance, this is not the way to do it,” Valentine recalled with a laugh in a 2020 interview recorded by colleague and Professor Emeritus John Yoder. “It was the worst job I ever had!”

Decades later, Valentine became science advisor and marketing chief for the first company dedicated to genetic engineering in plants, Calgene Inc., which conducted the research to genetically modify crop plants to make them immune to the herbicide Roundup. At the time Calgene began that research, the inexpensive, broad-spectrum weed-killer had little application. Now, it is used on nearly 300 million acres of cropland each year in the United States, plus home gardens and public spaces, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It's the most-used herbicide in the world, with about 900,000 tons applied annually and growing.

Valentine had an unusual ability to see unifying concepts and make intellectual leaps that would lead to world-changing discoveries, said Abhaya Dandekar, who was a young scientist when he started working with Valentine at UC Davis toward the end of 1982. “His groundbreaking discoveries and entrepreneurial spirit revolutionized the way we perceive and interact with plants,” wrote Dandekar, now a distinguished professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences, which absorbed Agronomy and Range Science in 2004.

Architect of using molecular biology in ag

Valentine was the first person to find the genes of bacteria involved in metabolizing nitrogen from the air and converting it to ammonia, a form of nitrogen that plants can use to grow. He further showed that those genes could be moved into other bacteria, and reasoned they could also be moved into plants. In 1975, he proposed that recombinant DNA be used to install those genes on the genome of plants that don't have them, enabling them to fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere and reducing the need for fertilizer in agriculture. He was the only agricultural scientist invited to attend the famous Asilomar Conference of 1975, where he introduced the term “molecular farming” to describe that process. “He was generally regarded as the architect of the use of molecular biology in agriculture,” Dandekar added.

Valentine also pushed UC Davis to embrace the link between research and commercial ventures. He was new to UC Davis in 1975 when he “proposed creating a nonprofit institute, associated with the university but with some autonomy, that would bring together genetics researchers and plant breeders,” wrote campus News and Media Relations Specialist Andy Fell in 2004. “He wanted to … (apply) the new DNA technology to generate new inventions and commercial products.”

Valentine was passionate about the impact such technology could have for farmers, processors and consumers, Dandekar said. “He understood the value of removing weeds.”

University rules limiting such ventures eventually changed, and despite a publicized controversy about potential conflicts of interest, Valentine teamed up with venture capitalist Norm Goldfarb to create Calgene. The company's scientists began working on genes for herbicide resistance, and their first product was the FLAVR SAVR tomato in 1994.

The venture succeeded. Between 1995 and 1997, the St. Louis-based Monsanto Corp. – maker of the glyphosate-containing herbicide Roundup – gradually purchased Calgene for a total of $320 million, according to published news reports.

Cross-disciplinary path set at Rockefeller Institute

As a young man, Valentine earned degrees in the fledgling field of microbiology from the University of Illinois in Urbana, leaving with a doctoral degree in 1962. His early work focused on nitrogen fixation, electron transport and how plants assimilate nitrogen. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Rockefeller Institute, in New York, in 1962, where he worked with people who had studied with, or who were themselves, some of the great pioneers in biology, genetics and physics of the early 20^th century. He later attributed to that experience much of his cross-disciplinary thinking about the problems he would later try to solve in crop science.

Among the early awards he received were a postdoctoral fellowship, a senior postdoctoral fellowship and a career development award, all from the United States Public Health Service between 1962 and 1977. He held academic and research positions at UC Berkeley and UC San Diego in the departments of biochemistry and chemistry before joining UC Davis.

Valentine was unafraid of speaking out with new ideas, and as a result, often stirred controversy, Dandekar said. But that did not sway him from “pushing the boundaries of knowledge to develop innovative solutions to global challenges.”

He was a member of the American Society of Microbiology, the American Society of Biological Chemistry and the American Society of Plant Physiologists.

Fun, jovial and loved to fish

Valentine is remembered for his warm and open mentoring style, his lively storytelling and for being fun and jovial. He customarily brought new researchers home to share family time at his property next to the campus' teaching orchards, Dandekar said.

Outside academia, Valentine enjoyed boating and fishing at Lake Berryessa, in the waters off California's Golden Gate, and Alaska. He was fascinated with new technology in cars, boat engines, navigation systems and fish finders. He was an avid duck-hunter, and belonged to a club in north-central California. He loved gathering fruit and sharing it with friends and neighbors.

He is survived by Cindy Anders, his life partner of 30 years; former wife Annalisa Valentine; children Rebecca Valentine, Lori Valentine and David (Carla) Valentine; and grandchildren Sawyer Crandall, Isabella Valentine, Sienna Valentine and Stella Valentine; Anders' sons Ben (Shari) Anders, David (Julie) Anders and Elliot (Tessa) Anders, and grandchildren, Eva, Sarah, Eli, Jude and Elsa Anders; and his sisters, Barbara Hinton, Marilynn Scott and Paula Valentine.

A celebration of life will be held on Saturday, Sept. 30, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, 27074 Patwin Road, Davis. For details, please contact the church at (530) 753-2581; or David Valentine or Cindy Anders.