Mancel Thornton Munn

Mancel Thornton Munn (1887 to 1956) was a New York State botanist, agronomist and expert in crop seed testing who pioneered some of the early American legislative efforts to regulate the import of seeds from other countries. Born at Plainwell, Michigan, he graduated from Michigan Agricultural College in 1911, having studied seed samples under Michigan's Pure Seed Law, and took a research post at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva in charge of the seed work. He became assistant botanist in 1918, associate botanist in 1929 and in 1936 professor and head of the Department of Seed Investigations, which he led until 1952, and he was later Emeritus Professor of Seed Investigations at Cornell University. He developed early techniques for testing seed viability, was interested in mycology and wrote station bulletins on onion neck-rot, the New York Seed Law and the quality of flower seeds. He died at Arcadia, California.