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Saturday, February 01, 2003

By Laurie Bruns, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens

He didn't invent peanut butter, but George Washington Carver did create more than 105 new uses for peanuts in food products. Carver didn't discover peanuts, but he did find more than 300 industrial applications for all parts of the peanut plant. He didn't invent plastic, but he did develop a plastic material from soybeans that Henry Ford used in his automobiles.

And, although Carver was not the first to understand the role of plants in fixing nitrogen, he was the first to persuade thousands of Southern farmers to replenish soil fertility by rotating peanuts, cowpeas and soybeans with cotton crops.

	Growing with Phipps This is one of a series of periodic columns by staffers of Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens. Laurie Bruns is an education specialist at Phipps. Previous installment Orchids brighten the home

While getting his bachelor's degree at Iowa State College in Ames, Iowa, Carver studied plant hybridization, a new science at the time. He joined the faculty of Iowa State in 1894, becoming the first African American on the staff, and began studying for a master's degree.

Shortly before completing his degree in 1896, Carver accepted a position at Tuskegee Institute in Tuskegee, Ala. Booker T. Washington, the institute's founder, wanted Carver to develop an agricultural department. Carver would remain there for the next 47 years.

At Tuskegee, he started with no laboratory and no equipment. But he and his original 13 students took discarded bottles and converted them to beakers and punched pieces of tin and turned them into strainers. An old gaslight became a Bunsen burner.

In 1897, the Alabama legislature approved funding for an "experiment station" -- a plot of land used for agricultural experiments. Carver used this land to demonstrate what he had learned about soils and soil enrichment. Initially, he and his students added decaying plant matter from nearby woodlands to the poor, sandy soil. Then they planted cowpeas to add nitrogen. The sweet potato crop grown the second year yielded more than six times the usual harvest. The third year, Carver planted cotton and got a record-setting yield. He had shown that crop rotation worked.

Carver and his students demonstrated that legumes -- peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas -- could all be planted to increase the fertility of the soil. They invited farmers to visit the experiment station to see for themselves. For those who could read, Carver prepared "how to" bulletins. He persuaded more and more farmers to plant peanuts and other crops, particularly when the spread of the boll weevil was devastating the cotton fields.

As farmers grew more peanuts, soybeans, cowpeas and sweet potatoes, they needed larger markets and more people to buy their products. Peanuts had been seen as a children's treat or food for pigs.

Carver pulled the peanut apart. He isolated its fats, gums, resins, sugars and starches. He tested different combinations under various degrees of heat and under different pressures. As the result of endless hours in the laboratory, Carver developed more and more synthetic products such as ink, dyes, shoe polish, shampoo, salves and shaving cream. From the shells, he made a soil conditioner, insulating board and fuel briquettes. He continued to publish bulletins about how to grow and how to prepare different foods, including recipes for four kinds of peanut soup.

In addition, he explored the soybean and the many products that could be made from it -- flour, coffee, breakfast food, oil, milk. He made wallboard from pinecones and pecan hulls.

During World War I, he found a way to replace textile dyes, formerly imported from Europe. He produced dyes of 500 shades and was responsible for the invention in 1927 of a process for producing paints and stains from soybeans. For this he received three separate patents.

Thomas Edison and Henry Ford both recognized the scientific genius that was Carver's. Edison invited Carver to work with him in his laboratory. Ford considered Carver to be the equal of Luther Burbank, John Burroughs and Edison as the greatest scientists of his time.

There is little doubt that Carver revolutionized agriculture in the South and was the genius behind the discovery of hundreds of new applications for plant products.

Be sure to visit Phipps during Black History Month to learn more about the relationship of African Americans and plants.