About the author

Björn Sigurbjörnsson. Unpublished collection of data from the cereal experiments performed in Iceland in the 1960´s and various information on cereal production during that period in possession of the author.

Páll Sigbjörnsson 1964. Agricultural adviser in east Iceland, 1963: Review of small grain growing in east Iceland in 1963, 2 pp (private collection).

Letter from Klemenz Kr. Kristjánsson to Jónas Jónsson, 12 Jan. 1965 (private collection).

Information on acreage and harvests of grain. Handbók bænda (The Farmers Handbook), issues from 1960 to 2008.

Various correspondences with agricultural advisers in Iceland and colleagues and institutes in Iceland and abroad (private collection).

List of orders for small grain seed and seed samples to seed firms and institutes abroad (private collection).

Björn Sigurbjörnsson was born 1931 in Reykjavik, Iceland. After graduating from the Agricultural College, Hvanneyri in 1952, he earned a B.Sc. in agriculture from the University of Manitoba in 1956 and M.Sc. in plant genetics from the same school in 1957. He studied the use of nuclear techniques in agriculture in the U.S.A., chiefly in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and earned a Ph.D. from Cornell University in plant breeding and genetics in 1960 doing his field research at the Headquarters of the Soil Conservation Service, Gunnarsholt. From 1960 to 1963 he was a research scientist at the University of Iceland´s Research Institute, Department of Agriculture where he led the research on small grains, the subject of this report. In 1963 he joined the staff of the Unit of Agriculture at the International Agency for Atomic Energy in Vienna as a plant breeding specialist and in 1964 became head of the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section of the new Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Atomic Energy in Agriculture. In 1968 he also became Deputy Director of that Division until he was appointed Director of the Icelandic Agricultural Research Institute in 1974. In 1983 he returned to Vienna as Director of the Joint FAO/IAEA Division until he returned to Iceland in 1995 to take over as Permanent Secretary of State for Agriculture in Iceland from which he retired in 2000.