Robert Delafield Rands was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 agronomist

Agronomist

An agronomist is a scientist who specializes in agronomy, which is the science of utilizing plants for food, fuel, feed, and fiber. An agronomist is an expert in agricultural and allied sciences, with the exception veterinary sciences.Agronomists deal with interactions between plants, soils, and...

 and mycologist. He served as Chief Director of Agriculture Office of Rubber

Rubber

Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...

 Plant Investigations in the United States Department of Agriculture

United States Department of Agriculture

The United States Department of Agriculture is the United States federal executive department responsible for developing and executing U.S. federal government policy on farming, agriculture, and food...

.

Biography

Rands was born in 1890. His Ph.D thesis at the University of Wisconsin was in the field of plant pathology.
In research in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, he showed that "brown bast" in Hevea

Hevea

Hevea is a genus of flowering plants in the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae. It is also one of many names used commercially for the wood of the most economically important species H. brasiliensis.-Selected species:* Hevea benthamiana Müll.Arg....

species was a result of phloem

Phloem

In vascular plants, phloem is the living tissue that carries organic nutrients , in particular, glucose, a sugar, to all parts of the plant where needed. In trees, the phloem is the innermost layer of the bark, hence the name, derived from the Greek word "bark"...

 necrosis

Necrosis

Necrosis is the premature death of cells in living tissue. Necrosis is caused by factors external to the cell or tissue, such as infection, toxins, or trauma. This is in contrast to apoptosis, which is a naturally occurring cause of cellular death...

 due to tapping

Rubber tapping

Rubber tapping is the process by which the sap is collected from a rubber tree. An incision is made in the tree's bark, which cuts through the planting cycle to optimise the latex yield....

 of the trees for latex

Latex

Latex is the stable dispersion of polymer microparticles in an aqueous medium. Latexes may be natural or synthetic.Latex as found in nature is a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants . It is a complex emulsion consisting of proteins, alkaloids, starches, sugars, oils, tannins, resins,...

. After returning to the United States, worked for the United States Department of Agriculture into diseases of sugar cane, and then at the beginning of World War II returned to study of rubber plants. He later became head of Rubber Investigations Office. On his retirement in 1954, he moved to Lake Wales

Lake Wales, Florida

Lake Wales is a city in Polk County, Florida, United States. The population was 10,194 at the 2000 census. As of 2004, the population recorded by the U.S. Census Bureau is 11,802 . It is part of the Lakeland–Winter Haven Metropolitan Statistical Area...

, Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

 and acted as a consultant

Consultant

A consultant is a professional who provides professional or expert advice in a particular area such as management, accountancy, the environment, entertainment, technology, law , human resources, marketing, emergency management, food production, medicine, finance, life management, economics, public...

 for the then B. F Goodrich Company

Goodrich Corporation

The Goodrich Corporation , formerly the B.F. Goodrich Company, is an American aerospace manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Founded in Akron, Ohio in 1870 as Goodrich, Tew & Co. by Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich. The company name was changed to the "B.F...

's establishment of rubber plantations in the Philippines and Africa.
Rand was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

American Association for the Advancement of Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...

, the American Phytopathological Society

American Phytopathological Society

The American Phytopathological Society is an international scientific organization devoted to the study of plant diseases. APS promotes the advancement of modern concepts in the science of plant pathology and in plant health management in agricultural, urban and forest settings...

, and the Washington Academy of Sciences

United States National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences is a corporation in the United States whose members serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science, engineering, and medicine." As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and...

. He was a member of the Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi: The Scientific Research Society is a non-profit honor society which was founded in 1886 at Cornell University by a junior faculty member and a handful of graduate students. Members elect others on the basis of their research achievements or potential...

 honor society

Honor society

In the United States, an honor society is a rank organization that recognizes excellence among peers. Numerous societies recognize various fields and circumstances. The Order of the Arrow, for example, is the national honor society of the Boy Scouts of America...

. Rands died 10 December 1970 in Lake Wales.

Journal articles

• Rands, RD. 1922. Streepkanker van Kaneel veroorzaakt door Phytophthora cinnamomi n.sp. Comunicaciones del Instituto Vegetales. Buitenzorg 54: 1–53
• ----. 1924. South American Leaf Disease of Para Rubber. USDA Bulletin 1286. Washington, DC
• ----. 1928. Sugar-cane variety tests in Louisiana during the crop year 1926-27 Circular USDA 15 pp.
• Stevenson, JA; RD Rands. 1938. An annotated list of fungi and bacteria associated with sugar cane and its products. Hawaiian Planters’ Record 42 (4): 247–313

Books

• Rands, RD; E Dopp. 1938. Pythium root rot of sugarcane. Technical bulletin (USDA) : 666. 96 pp.
• ----. 1967. Genealogy of the Rands family and records on allied families Winn, Turner, Connelly, McCollum, Parsons, Baylor, Boone, and Bryan. vi + 78 pp.