François Rozier

He was ordained priest but lacked a vocation and thus became manager of his elder brother's estate in the Sainte-Colombe district on the banks of the Rhône, near Vienne, after their father's death in 1757.

He convinced his friends, including Marc Antoine Louis Claret de La Tourrette (1729–1793) and Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert (1741–1814), into his schemes to convert the lands to pasture.

This gave him a steady post and independence that also included a stay in Poland at the court of Stanisław August Poniatowski founding a garden and a chair in botany.

Rozier had a particular interest in wine (he won a prize proposed by the Société d’agriculture de Limoges on the subject for an 8 volume treatise in 1770), in Brassica rapa and in colza (1774).

In 1779 he set himself up near Béziers (domaine de Beauséjour) where he edited his Cours complet d'agriculture… ou Dictionnaire universel l'agriculture, par une société d'agriculteurs (twelve volumes, of which nine were by Rozier himself, 1781–1800).