Lena B. Smithers Hughes

[1][3] In 1931, she and her husband Ausker Hughes, a chemist, moved to Lake County, Florida, where they both worked on citrus research.

[2][3] After Ausker died in 1944, Hughes continued the breeding research on her own, eventually settling near Orlando in Orange County.

[2] This research led to improved, virus-free varieties of the Valencia orange, which had originally been developed by American agronomist William Wolfskill in the mid-19th century.

[1][5] These virus-free strains were used to produce budwood for growers with such success that by 1983, her Hughes Valencia bud line made up some 60 percent of all Valencia oranges propagated for cultivation in Florida.

[2] In a pair of bad winter freezes in 1984 and 1985, Hughes's last 150 acres of oranges were wiped out and she decided not to replant, knowing that it would take ten years before she could turn a profit and suspecting she did not have that much time left.