Leslie Coleman


Leslie Charles Coleman was a Canadian entomologist, plant pathologist and virologist who worked as the first director of agriculture in Mysore State in southern India. He conducted pioneering research on the pests and diseases affecting agriculture in the region and was instrumental in establishing several agricultural research institutions including the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore and the Central Coffee Research Institute at Balehonnur. His major contributions to plant protection included measures to control a rot disease of coffee caused by Pellicularia koleroga known in southern India as koleroga. Coleman established an inexpensive control measure for another disease, also known as koleroga, a generic name for rot-causing diseases in Kannada, that caused complete destruction in areca plantations. Sprays of inexpensive Bordeaux mixture on the growing crowns helped control infection caused by what he described as Phytophthora arecae.

Early life

Leslie Coleman was born in Durham County, Ontario, Canada, on 16 June 1878 to Elizabeth and Francis T. Coleman. He had three brothers and two sisters. The family appears to have moved between Toronto and Spokane, Washington as Coleman went to the Arthur High School and Harbord Collegiate Institute after which Leslie became a primary school teacher. In 1900 he joined the University of Toronto and graduated in science with a Governor General's Gold medal in 1904. Coleman spent the summer of 1904 at the marine research stations at Malpeque and at Georgian Bay where he studied oyster cultivation. He received the Frederick Wyld Prize for English Essay in 1905. He moved to Germany for further study and obtained a doctorate from the University of Göttingen. Here he studied nitrification by soil bacteria. He trained in mycology under Heinrich Klebahn. From 1906, he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Agriculture and Forestry in Berlin for two years before he obtained a five-year appointment as Mycologist and Entomologist in the State of Mysore in India in 1908.

India

Coleman succeeded Adolf Lehmann, a Canadian chemist of German descent, who advised the State of Mysore on agriculture. Lehmann's appointment was the result of a committee headed by Dr J.A. Voelcker to improve agriculture in India. Coleman initially headed the Chemistry department of the Mysore Agricultural Department and began to study plant pests and diseases. He was appointed as the Director of Agriculture in 1913 and held the position until 1934. From January 1919 to July, he taught biology to Canadian army personnel returning from the First World War in a makeshift training centre in Ripon, Yorkshire. This six month course at the Khaki University was accepted by Canadian universities as equal to a full year of coursework.
Coleman's research in Mysore included studies on coffee rust, Hemileia vastatrix, and a disease of areca caused by Phytophthora palmivora. He also studied a mycoplasma infection that affected sandal and caused sandal spike. Coleman mentored the Indian entomologist K. Kunhikannan and the mycologist M. J. Narasimhan who worked as his assistants. In 1921 and 1933 he introduced Agromyzid flies from Hawaii for the control of Lantana. Coleman also examined economic policies and was an advisor to many government bodies. In 1918, he spoke at the Mysore Economic Conference on the Japanese approach to consolidation of small farmer holdings to reduce wastage of land for boundaries noting however that such an idea would be difficult to implement in India due to Hindu laws of inheritance.
He was also instrumental in establishing the Central Coffee Research Institute at Balehonnur in 1925 and the Mysore Sugar Factory at Mandya on 15 January 1934. Coleman also suggested experiments on X-ray induced mutation for breeding new sugarcane varieties based on his observations of similar attempts on Tobacco at the Klaten Experimental Station in Java. These mutation experiments were then conducted by V.K. Badami. He was also involved in the establishment of the Agricultural College at Hebbal in Bangalore which later became the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore. Another innovation was the establishment of the Mysore Agricultural and Experimental Union in 1918, consisting of land owning cultivators interested in carrying out experiments and scientific investigations on new methods, conduct manure and crop trials just like the government experimental farms while also popularising new ideas among farmers. A field day was held once a year in November. The Union was based on a similar idea in Ontario and published a quarterly journal in English and a Kannada monthly., standing third from left and V.K. Badami, sitting, fourth from left.As a member of the board of agriculture in India, Coleman headed various committees and was responsible for the establishment of a statistical unit at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute.
A grasshopper genus, Colemania and another species Parahieroglyphus colemani were named after him by Ignacio Bolívar. Coleman made an extensive study of Colemania sphenarioides, a pest in some regions that affected millet crops. The scale insect Coccus colemani found on coffee was named after him by his assistant entomologist Kunhi Kannan in 1918. Coleman was interested in the role of natural parasites and predators for the control of pests. He was involved in measures to control Opuntia in Kolar district that included manual removal, conversion of Opuntia to green manure, and the use of cochineal insects in their control. He reared and studied many species of parasites. Telenomus colemani, Anastatus colemani, and Tetrastichus colemani are named after him. Coleman was the first to introduced legislative measures to control pests. He made it compulsory for planters to take measures to control coffee stem-borer.

Return to Canada

In 1925 Coleman briefly returned to Canada due to ill health to take up a position in the Toronto University department of botany. In 1927 a part-time position of plant pathologist in Ontario was created. He worked briefly on the dead arm of grapes caused by Cryptosporella viticola. Coleman did not continue for long and resigned to return to India. In 1929 he published a report on the work done in Mysore and how it compared with the recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India. Coleman was made Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1931. Working again for a few years in Mysore, Coleman retired from his position as Director of Agriculture in 1934 and left India to work at Toronto University, teaching and researching genetics. He worked on the cytology of Gasteria and Allium in 1936. In 1948 he studied the cytology of a grasshopper.
Coleman was married twice. His first wife Mary MacDonald Urquhart died on May 10, 1918 in the Biligirirangan Hills from diabetes and was buried in the Honnametti estate of R.C. Morris. They had a son John Urquhart Coleman. Coleman married Phebe Ropes, daughter of Willis H. Ropes of Danvers, Massachusetts, an artist trained in Boston, on 23 May 1923. They had two daughters and a son. Towards the end of 1953 Coleman visited Karnataka privately, but on hearing about his visit, the then chief minister Kengal Hanumanthaiah declared him a state guest and took him to see the state of agriculture and places where he had worked. Shortly after returning to Canada in 1954, while driving to his lab in Saanichton through dense fog, his car hit a culvert and he was killed.