Ernest Robert Sears (October 15, 1910, Bethel, Polk County, Oregon – February 15, 1991) was an American geneticist, botanist, pioneer of plant genetics, and leading expert on wheat cytogenetics.
[1] Sears and Sir Ralph Riley (1924–1999) are perhaps the two most important founders of chromosome engineering[2][3] in plant breeding.
[6] Sears was a pioneer of methods of transferring agriculturally desirable genes into cultivated wheat from its wild relatives.
[1] The methods pioneered by Sears are also important for introducing genes for plant resistance against insects.
[4] Sears retired from the USDA in 1980 but continued to work in the University of Missouri's greenhouses and in his campus office until his death in 1991.