Agricultural History Review, Volume 45 Part 1 (1997), pp. 73–85

Agricultural science was not a discipline often followed by young women in Australia in the 1930s. An exception was Yvonne Aitken who specialized in the adaptation of agricultural species to climate through flowering responses. Encouraged by her mentor, Aitken stayed at the University of Melbourne after her graduation to work on her Master's degree. For several years thereafter she continued with her research on subterranean clover. Appointed to the full-time staff in the mid-1950s, she spent the rest of her working life at the university. Her work covered many continents and many climates: in the early 1960s she made a systematic study of temperature and daylength in early- and late-flowering varieties of nine agricultural species; in the early 1970s she began a breeding programme on maize, a programme she is still continuing nineteen years after her official retirement. Her achievement was to help plant scientists in selecting more rapidly varieties of a desired species with the appropriate growing period to match a specific climate in temperate or tropical zones. 

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