History of the Department of Food Science and Technology

  It is interesting that my going to college and the birth of the department of food science at Berkeley were almost coincidental.

  I went to Berkeley because Stanford was too expensive. When I registered at Berkeley, I did not know what to choose for a field to study. Since coming from a prune farm, I chose horticulture, even though prunes were selling for about two cents a pound. I loved botany, but I did not feel there was a future in botany, and I could not earn a living in that field.

  I was at Berkeley one semester when I suddenly noted there was a study area termed fruit products. I judged it had something to do with the preservation of foods and, since I had worked in a cannery, I thought it would be interesting to look into the field of fruit products.

  I met Professor W. V. Cruess, who was in charge. He appeared interested in students, so I changed my major to fruit products. I found Cruess to be a very helpful and hardworking person, but also a hard taskmaster, although I think this was good. Fruit products at that time was under Professor Bioletti, a viticulturist, who headed the department of viticulture and zymology at Berkeley. Cruess was a member of this department, and the evolving field of fruit products was still under Bioletti.

  About that time, Prohibition came into effect. Professor Cruess, under Professor Bioletti (there is a Bioletti Way on this campus), worked in the department in the field of zymology or winemaking in Hilgard Hall in Berkeley. When Prohibition became a reality, Professor Cruess wondered what he should do. Bioletti continued in the field of viticulture, but what was Cruess, a chemist, to do? Grapes were still grown in spite of Prohibition, but Professor Cruess was concerned with the technology of winemaking.

  Cruess noted that there were surpluses of various fruits in California and thought they might be converted into products that would be salable. He, therefore, started to work in the area of fruit products. About that time, the new sub-department of fruit products came into being.

  In any event, Professor Cruess started to work on products such as fruit cocktail, fruit nectars, fruit juices, fruit soda pops, etc.

  In my junior year, Cruess gave me a job making soda pops with fruit syrup bases which were then shipped to the Nut Tree for sales trials. Even though the products were very acceptable, they did not take on commercially. Ten cents a bottle compared with five cents for regular soda pop was too much.

  About that time, two new men, John Irish and Arthur Christie, were added to the department. Irish worked on juices and such products. Christie, on the other hand, was employed about the time when early fall rains ruined tons and tons of prunes that were drying on trays in the sun. Christie teamed up with an engineer by the name of Ridley, and the two started working on the artificial drying of fruits and, to my knowledge, were the first ones to come up with the idea of using the counter current forced draft dehydrator for drying prunes and other fruits.

  About that time too, there was a developing interest in the mechanical drying of walnuts, and E. H. Guthier and Paul Nichols were brought in to pursue this field. Later came Maynard Joslyn and George Marsh who entered the field of freezing, and Reese Vaughn and L. McClung to cover the field of food microbiology. I believe they are the first in the universities to do this type of work, although there was Dutch Diehl in the Department of Agriculture and Birdseye in the commercial arena. When Prohibition was repealed, Joslyn and Marsh also led the way in doing some of the early work on wine, and led the way until the department of enology evolved at Davis.

  I came in the department because there was a surplus of prunes, and the prune association established a marvelous graduate fellowship which offered $75.00 a month to a person to work on prune products.

  One of the products we came up with was prune juice. I could not believe anyone would want prune juice, but I did think prune puree or pulp would be an excellent product in ice cream, bread, sodas, etc. And it was, but the one that took on and sold was prune juice.

  So it went, although the new developments were not generally accepted at Berkeley by others in the College of Agriculture. I remember so well a Professor by the name of Byrd who taught a course in plant nutrition and who spent a great deal of time on fertilizers, including manure. He did not think much of what was going on in fruit products. As a matter of fact, he said to me one day with a sneer, "How is the jelly and jam scientist today?" He felt it was alright to work on manure, but not on something we eat.

  Whether or not these attitudes had an effect, I do not know, but I do know that Dean Hutchison encouraged Cruess to get into more basic work. In line with this, Gordon Mackinney was brought into the department to study carotenoids and other color constituents in foods. Marsh, Joslyn, and Vaughn changed to more basic areas, and Herman Phaff and I started working on yeast, and so it went.

  There was a great expansion in courses. Strange as it may seem, the courses were popular, especially for students majoring in chemistry who felt information in the area of foods would lead the way to jobs. At first, there were survey lectures and laboratory courses. Later, specialty courses came along, such as one by Mackinney on color and one given by Joslyn, Phaff, and myself on yeast.

  I remember so well, as these courses were developing, Cruess had a meeting with the department and they talked about requirements for a major. Some of the people wanted calculus and more basic courses, but Cruess thought we would lose students by doing this. In fact, more came in.

  So it went until World War II when the department was called on to work on dehydration of vegetables. I think the department made some excellent contributions in this area. The importance of blanching prior to dehydration and reduction of moisture content to a low level were ably demonstrated.

  During the war, a number of us became involved in Quartermaster's activities. When the war ended, we again became active in changing the department. I believe it was about this time that the name of the department was changed to food technology, and it was separated from viticulture. I eventually became chairman and, during my period, pressure was building to move the department to Davis. It so happened that Tom Richards of the Bercut-Richards Canning Company in Sacramento had a great friend in the Senate - Senator Earl Desmond. They got together and decided there should be a food technology department at Davis.

  The move to Davis was an interesting and exciting one. It was decided that all members of the department, except Mackinney, Joslyn, and Cruess, would move to Davis. I remember so well when Vaughn, Marsh, and I were among the first who came to Davis. It was exciting developing the department here. There was a great expansion. We had the Pilot Plant, we had laboratories for basic work, and the new facility had an acceptance laboratory which, to my knowledge, was one of the first in the country.

  The experience at Davis has been a good one. We were welcomed by other departments and have worked with them.

  Enrollment in the department grew, courses grew, the reputation of the department grew, not only throughout the United States, but throughout the world.

  In my opinion, the department at Davis is number one in the country today. I say this because among the pioneers in the field, Oregon is certainly holding its own, but M.I.T. is changing and moving toward what they call bio-technology, whatever it is. There are many new departments, some of which offer a Ph.D. in Food Science. We do not have such a program at Davis [a Ph.D. program in Food Science has been added since this writing], although students in Food Science can pursue a Ph.D. in basic science while working on a problem of interest with a department member.

  We have an outstanding department at Davis. We have outstanding members on the staff, we have expanded in the areas of research, we have expanded teaching and, above all, the number of women coming into the field is dramatic. When food technology was started in Berkeley, we had one or two girls in the field. When we started at Davis, we had a few, but not many. We brought in Dr. Ellie Henreiner to run our acceptance laboratory, so we even had a lady on the staff.

  I will close this by saying it has been a thrill for me to see the developments at Davis, how the department works so well with other departments, and how it has developed in teaching, research, and service to the state in a magnificent manner. We have a marvelous department.