Olivia McClure
Some would call Julian C. Miller a pioneer in horticulture. To others, he was either the father or savior of several agricultural industries — and countless livelihoods — in Louisiana.
Miller was an LSU horticulturist whose novel research methods allowed him to create new, improved crop varieties. His releases reignited Irish potato production in Louisiana, improved the fortunes of struggling strawberry producers and sparked the growth of fledgling industries centered on sweet potatoes and peaches.
Born in South Carolina in 1895, Miller studied horticulture at Clemson College, graduating in 1921 after a stint in the U.S. Navy during World War I. He served as an instructor at North Carolina State College and a county agent in Orangeburg County, South Carolina, before heading to Cornell University to pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in the Department of Vegetable Crops.
With his freshly minted doctorate in hand, Miller accepted a job at LSU in 1929 as head of its new horticulture department. He would go on to hold the position for 37 years, overseeing unprecedented expansion of research and education initiatives.
When he was first hired, Miller was one of only three trained horticulturists in Louisiana. LSU provided Miller a mule, a plow, a field foreman and the Hill Farm, 40 acres on the outskirts of campus.
Miller traversed the globe and Louisiana backroads alike in search of plant material with potential uses in his fruit and vegetable breeding program, which he undertook at Hill Farm and at the LSU research station in Calhoun.
He released varieties of several crops that were a boon to the Louisiana agriculture sector. Even small-time farmers in rural Louisiana benefitted from his work. He helped them become more productive in the pea patches and potato fields they relied upon to feed their families.
Sometimes, the people he met offered him seeds of crops they’d grown for years; Miller used some of them as parent plants to breed improved varieties. Take Ruby Jane Green Savage, for instance. The Union Parish resident provided Miller with some of her pole bean seeds, which Miller used to develop the Savage Wonder and Green Savage — varieties that have been recovered by the North Louisiana Seed Preservation Program. Savage and Miller became good friends.
Miller made his biggest impact with sweet potatoes. When he arrived at LSU, people in Louisiana mostly grew the tubers on a small scale to feed themselves and their livestock. In 1934, Miller found the Unit 1 Porto Rico sweet potato, a desirable mutation of a then-popular variety, which “resulted in the development of a new agricultural industry in Louisiana,” according to a biography of Miller by the Southern Region of the American Society for Horticultural Sciences.
In 1937, he came up with a technique to induce sweet potato plants, which are native to tropical South America, to flower and produce seed in Louisiana’s climate.
“At that time sweet potatoes would not blossom and set seed in the United States and it was of course not possible to develop new varieties by classical breeding methods,” the biography says.
This development paved the way for new varieties tailored to Louisiana needs. Miller led efforts to establish the Sweet Potato Research Station and its breeding program near Chase in 1949. He released the Goldrush variety in 1951 and the aptly named Centennial in 1960 — LSU’s 100th anniversary.
A decade later, “every acre of the 55,000 acres grown commercially in Louisiana were of the Centennial variety, and it was estimated that 80% of all sweet potatoes grown commercially in the United States were of the Centennial variety. Production of this variety was not only in the United States, but also in Latin America, Africa and Asia,” according to the biography.
He even helped create a dehydrated sweet potato product that was used to feed Army troops during World War II.
Miller was noted for his disease-resistant strawberry varieties, particularly the Klonmore. Growers who planted Miller’s new varieties saved large sums of money because they no longer had to spray expensive fungicides to control leaf spot and scorch, diseases that had long bedeviled their crops. A grateful strawberry industry group gifted him a new car in 1948. He also developed a peach variety that prompted growth of the peach industry in north Louisiana, which was an important economic force up until recent years.
Miller made strides in breeding Irish potatoes — introducing the Red LaSoda, which is still widely grown today. Prior to Red LaSoda, the potato industry was considered a bygone relic in Louisiana; this release reinvigorated production.
Miller worked with many other crops, too. The horticulture society tallied his total variety releases at 42, spanning snapbeans to squash, cabbage to carrots.
Miller wasn’t only an accomplished scientist and plant breeder. People admired other skills he employed to advance his research program.
“Miller had an uncanny ability to attract scarce federal funds to support a burgeoning research program in sweet potato, Irish potato and other vegetable crops,” wrote Don La Bonte, the AgCenter’s current sweet potato breeder, in a 2012 issue of this magazine. “His efforts led to the development of the first breeding program in sweet potato. Meticulous lab notebooks exist to this day documenting the lengths he took in a quest to find plant material as far away as Cuba and Russia.”
Farmers in Avoyelles Parish, a top sweet potato-producing area, helped fundraise for one of Miller’s international treks — a show of their appreciation of Miller’s contributions to their industry. “Every farmer is being asked to donate the value of at least one bushel of potatoes to the fund,” Stephen Guilbeau, an extension agent, told the Alexandria Daily Town Talk in a 1965 article about the effort.
Miller also was a beloved university instructor. Students especially enjoyed a Saturday morning, graduate-level course on international agriculture inspired by Miller’s travels to obtain plant material and the connections he had made in other countries.
He advised more than 250 master’s and doctoral students during his tenure at LSU, many of whom went on to head horticulture departments and serve as extension and experiment station directors at universities nationwide. Some of his students chose careers that took them to developing countries, where they could share the agricultural knowledge Miller had instilled in them.
Miller, who retired in 1966, is known to many people today only by the horticulture and agronomy building named in his honor at LSU. But his contributions played no small role in shaping the history of the campus, of the agriculture industry, of the lives of numerous people in Louisiana and beyond.
When he died in April 1971 at the age of 75, the Baton Rouge Morning Advocate ran an editorial lauding the horticulturist’s many achievements.
“Thousands of individual small land-owners who once lived on the raw edge of poverty have prospered because his plant research made their once-barren acres highly productive,” the editorial said, noting that Miller’s work also improved life for millions in other countries.
Olivia McClure is a writer, editor, photographer and videographer in AgCenter Communications.
This article appears in the summer 2024 edition of Louisiana Agriculture magazine.
Horticulturist Julian C. Miller used novel research methods to create new, improved crop varieties. AgCenter file photo
Horticulturist Julian C. Miller checks a bean plant. Miller was a celebrated horticulturist known for improving plant varieties. AgCenter file photo
Julian C. Miller speaks to farmers. Miller was hired in 1929 to head the LSU horticulture department, a position he held for decades. AgCenter file photo