Rudi Milatz

Rudolph Milatz (born August 3, 1903 in Hummelshain , Thuringia , † February 24, 1979 in Sehnde ) was a German crop scientist . His field of work was the development of criteria for agricultural crops and their evaluation for the identification of varieties .

Life

Rudi Milatz, son of a customs officer, studied agriculture at the University of Leipzig from 1923 to 1926 and then worked as a scientific clerk at the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding at the University of Leipzig until 1934. On behalf of the German Agriculture Council , he worked on the problem of the independence of oat varieties and created the basis for a variety adjustment. In 1931 he received his doctorate in Leipzig under the aegis of Adolf Zade with a dissertation on the application of biological variation statistics to differentiate between types of grain.

In 1934 Milatz was appointed to the main department II of the Reichsnährstand in Berlin with the task of setting up examination offices for the variety register for all agricultural and horticultural crops. In the following years, twelve examination centers were set up in Germany. In 1943 the Reichsortenregisterstelle was relocated to Nossen in Saxony. Milatz was able to continue his activities here after 1945. In 1948 he was released from the Soviet military administration. From 1949 to 1967 he was the head of the register test for agriculturally used plant species at the Plant Variety Office ( Bundessortenamt ) in Rethmar near Hanover.

Milatz published the results of his studies on oat varieties in several specialist journals after 1933, summarized in 1936 in the "Landwirtschaftliche Jahrbücher" (Agricultural Yearbooks). His most important publication is the book “ Criteria for cereal types including maize and their evaluation for variety identification ”, published in 1970 - to this day a standard and reference work for the evaluation of variety properties .

Publications (selection)

• The application of biological variation statistics to differentiate between types of grain in a critical-experimental view . Diss. Phil. Univ. Leipzig 1931. - Zugl. in: Scientific Archive for Agriculture Dept. A, Archive for Crop Production . Volume 6, 1931, pp. 260-298.
• New oat variety characteristics . In: Applied botany . Volume 15, 1933, pp. 481-518.
• The oats in the variety register . In: Agricultural yearbooks . Volume 83, 1936, pp. 3-152. - Zugl. as a separate print at the Paul Parey publishing house in Berlin in 1936.
• Path and work of the German variety register . In: The Research Service . Volume 3, 1937, pp. 345-357.
• Grain species criteria including maize and their assessment for variety identification. Represented on the basis of practical experience and scientific knowledge . Published by the Association of German Plant Breeders e. V. Bonn 1970.

literature

• R. Milatz 60 years old . In: Communications from the German Agricultural Society . Volume 78, 1963, pp. 982–983.

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudi Milatz in the catalog of the German National Library