George Lowe Sutton

George Lowe Sutton (1872 to 1964) was an Australian agricultural scientist and wheat breeder. Born in Lancashire, he was taken to New South Wales as a boy in 1882, studied at Sydney Boys High School, and after dairy farming and work in Queensland became experimentalist and then lecturer at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, where he befriended William Farrer. He ran an experimental farm at Cowra and, after Farrer died in 1906, headed wheat breeding in New South Wales. As agricultural commissioner for the Western Australian Wheatbelt from 1911 he cross-bred the leaf rust resistant variety Nabawa, and from 1921 to 1937 he was the state's first Director of Agriculture. He set the W.A. Standard White wheat standard and received the Farrer Memorial Medal in 1937.