Is Pablum Ontario’s best invention?

In 1966, Gary Johnston bred the first Yukon Gold potato — a vegetable he really didn’t think we needed.

The University of Guelph plant scientist would write to colleagues that Belgian and Dutch farmers, who had immigrated to the Lake Erie area, “began petitioning for the breeding and licensing of a yellow-fleshed potato variety like they had ‘over home.’

“Back then I wasn’t really sure that we needed a yellow-fleshed potato in Ontario,” he wrote, according to the now archived letter.

“However in the late 1959s (sic) we had a graduate student from Peru whose father had a large plantation in the Cuzco region of the Andes east of Lima.

“I had a couple of talks with him about potatoes in Peru.”

The student sent Johnston some yellow potatoes from Peru. They tasted wonderful but they were little and rough-looking.

Johnston’s patient breeding produced the classic yellow potato that is sold today in every supermarket.

It’s an accomplishment that’s been included in a Top 50 list of Ontario’s “game-changing” discoveries and inventions, put together by a group of universities.

You can even vote for your favourite: The Council of Ontario Universities and 21 individual universities want the public to pick the top five.

“The main goal behind putting together this collection and this competition is that there are really so many examples of game-changing discoveries coming out of Ontario universities,” said Mary Chaktsiris, the project co-ordinator for the universities’ campaign called Research Matters.

The list includes well-known discoveries, such as the use of insulin in diabetes. In addition: The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto invented Pablum in an effort to prevent malnutrition in infants;

In 1938, Eli Burton, Albert Prebus and James Hillier designed the first robust electron microscope able to examine a variety of materials;

John Smol of Queen’s University began using lake sediments to analyze ecosystem changes, starting with acid rain in the 1980s;

The motion picture process Technicolor has roots here;

Dr. Norman Bethune’s mobile blood transfusion unit in the Spanish Civil War and his later work in China “revolutionized battlefield and remote medicine;”

Wilbur Franks of the University of Toronto developed the anti-blackout suit in 1940. The pressurized suit let Allied pilots stay conscious under high G-forces and was later used in space travel; and

Western University’s Dr. David Bailey discovered in 1989 that grapefruit has a huge effect on the way the body metabolizes many drugs.

There are non-scientific achievements in the list, too. It includes the work of the Group of Seven (many of whom studied at what was then the Ontario College of Art), and literary critic Northrop Frye.

Carleton University is on the list. In 1965, John Porter made “significant contributions to the field of sociology, inspiring the term ‘cultural mosaic.’”

So is the University of Ottawa: The nominators say Michael Geist “changes Canadian government policy on copyright into one of the most significant, user-oriented and progressive reforms in the world.”

The full list of 50 is at yourontarioresearch.ca.

Chaktsiris said people will get a better understanding of “impacts of university research that aren’t really talked about all that much.

“Many people may know the Yukon Gold potato, but do we really know the connections to universities in the province?”