Lena B. Smithers Hughes

Lena B. Smithers Hughes (1905 to 1987) was an American botanist who developed improved strains of the Valencia orange, the sweet orange grown in the United States mainly for commercial orange juice. Born in Elgin, Tennessee, she earned degrees from the University of Tennessee and Wayne State University and in 1931 moved with her husband Ausker Hughes, a chemist, to Lake County, Florida, where they worked on citrus research and developed new orange strains from nucellar seedlings of Parson Brown and Valencia oranges. After his death in 1944 she continued the breeding alone, producing improved, virus-free Valencia budwood so successful that by 1983 her Hughes Valencia bud line made up some 60 percent of Valencia oranges propagated in Florida. She was the first woman named to the Florida Agricultural Hall of Fame and was also inducted into the Florida Women's Hall of Fame and the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame, and she founded the Hughes Memorial Foundation for horticulture scholarships in 1960.