Leslie Charles Coleman CIE (16 June 1878 – 14 September 1954) was a Canadian entomologist, plant pathologist and virologist who worked as the first director of agriculture in Mysore State in southern India.

He introduced improved tillage implements, sprayers, tractors, and played a key role in the establishment of the Mysore Sugar Company in Mandya.

Coleman established measures for koleroga, a generic name for rot-causing diseases in Kannada, that caused complete destruction in areca plantations.

[4] Coleman spent the summer of 1904 at the marine research stations at Malpeque and at Georgian Bay where he studied oyster cultivation.

[8] From 1906, he worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Agriculture and Forestry in Berlin for two years before he obtained a five-year appointment as Mycologist and Entomologist in the State of Mysore in India in 1908.

[9][10] Coleman joined as an entomologist in the agricultural research establishment begun in the State of Mysore by Adolf Lehmann, a Canadian chemist of German descent.

Voelcker to improve agriculture in India and while Lehmann's focus had been on soil fertility but he felt the need for a qualified plant protection expert.

[11] Shortly after Coleman's arrival the government of Mysore decided not to renew Lehmann's contract and following the death of his wife, wished to return to Canada.

In 1912, he wrote on agronomic experiments conducted on traditional paddy varieties and their cultivation techniques at the Hebbal research farms.

In 1918, Coleman spoke at the Mysore Economic Conference on the Japanese approach to consolidation of small farmer holdings to reduce wastage of land for boundaries and noted that such an idea would be difficult to implement in India due to the Hindu laws of inheritance.

[21] From January 1919 to July, Coleman taught biology to Canadian army personnel returning from the First World War in a makeshift training centre in Ripon, Yorkshire.

Coleman experimented with and identified the well-known Bordeaux mixture as an inexpensive solution to control the spread of oospores during the monsoon.

Farmers however needed to be trained on how to produce the mixture with careful pH measurement, and to apply it on the growing crown and base of the nuts just prior to the onset of the monsoon.

Spray at a height however was a challenge and required new equipment, and Coleman went about organizing import subsidies on sprayers through the agriculture department.

As a research administrator Coleman recruited and mentored the Indian entomologist K. Kunhikannan, the mycologist M. J. Narasimhan and several others who worked as assistants.

[30] On his return he also suggested experiments on X-ray induced mutation for breeding new sugarcane varieties based on observations of similar attempts on tobacco at the Klaten Experimental Station in Java.

The first laboratory for breeding parasites to help control sugarcane stem borer was established in 1935-36 at Mandya following research begun in 1933.

[9] Mass campaigns involving school children to collect hairy caterpillars for control were also a novel idea introduced by the department under his directorship.

[43][44] In 1925 Coleman briefly returned to Canada due to ill health to take up a position in the Toronto University department of botany.

[48][49] In 1929 he published a report on the work done in Mysore and how it compared with the recommendations made by the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India.

[51] After working for three more years in Mysore, Coleman retired, following repeated attacks of amoebic dysentery, from his position as Director of Agriculture.

Shortly after returning to Canada in 1954, while driving to his lab in Saanichton through dense fog, his car hit a culvert and he was killed.

His met his first wife Mary "May" MacDonald Urquhart (born Oct 19, 1882), daughter of a local physician, when she was a student at the University of Toronto and married her shortly before leaving to India.

He was critical of all religions and when invited to speak once at Victoria he declared that "reincarnation makes as much sense as the doctrine of the Virgin Birth".