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Rothamsted Research

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Panorama of Rothamsted Research
Panorama of Rothamsted Research

Rothamsted Research, previously known as the Rothamsted Experimental Station and then the Institute of Arable Crops Research, is one of the oldest agricultural research institutions in the world, having been founded in 1843. It is located at Harpenden in the English county of Hertfordshire and is a registered charity under English law.[1]

One of the station's best known and longest-running experiments is the Park Grass Experiment, a biological study that started in 1856 and has been continuously monitored ever since.[2]

Coordinates: 51°48′33″N 0°21′19″W / 51.80917°N 0.35528°W / 51.80917; -0.35528

Discover more about Rothamsted Research related topics

Agricultural experiment station

Agricultural experiment station

An agricultural experiment station (AES) or agricultural research station (ARS) is a scientific research center that investigates difficulties and potential improvements to food production and agribusiness. Experiment station scientists work with farmers, ranchers, suppliers, processors, and others involved in food production and agriculture.

Harpenden

Harpenden

Harpenden is a town and civil parish in the City and District of St Albans in the county of Hertfordshire, England. The population of the built-up area was 30,240 in the 2011 census, whilst the population of the civil parish was 29,448. Harpenden is a commuter town, with a direct rail connection through Central London and property prices well over triple the national average.

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire

Hertfordshire is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For government statistical purposes, it forms part of the East of England region.

Charitable organization

Charitable organization

A charitable organization or charity is an organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being.

Park Grass Experiment

Park Grass Experiment

The Park Grass Experiment is a biological study originally set up to test the effect of fertilizers and manures on hay yields. The scientific experiment is located at the Rothamsted Research in the English county of Hertfordshire, and is notable as one of the longest-running experiments of modern science, as it was initiated in 1856 and has been continually monitored ever since.

Geographic coordinate system

Geographic coordinate system

The geographic coordinate system (GCS) is a spherical or ellipsoidal coordinate system for measuring and communicating positions directly on the Earth as latitude and longitude. It is the simplest, oldest and most widely used of the various spatial reference systems that are in use, and forms the basis for most others. Although latitude and longitude form a coordinate tuple like a cartesian coordinate system, the geographic coordinate system is not cartesian because the measurements are angles and are not on a planar surface.

History

John Bennet Lawes
John Bennet Lawes
The Centenary building at Rothamsted Research, finished in 2003
The Centenary building at Rothamsted Research, finished in 2003

The Rothamsted Experimental Station was founded in 1843 by John Bennet Lawes, a noted Victorian era entrepreneur and scientist who had founded one of the first artificial fertilizer manufacturing factories in 1842, on his 16th-century estate, Rothamsted Manor, to investigate the impact of inorganic and organic fertilizers on crop yield.

Joseph Henry Gilbert
Joseph Henry Gilbert

Lawes had Henry King conduct studies on the application of bone dust to turnip fields between 1836 and 1838. In 1840 he hired Dobson, a chemist. He had experiments conducted with bone ash treated with sulphuric acid and various other mixtures. It is thought that the experiments were at least to some extent influenced by Justus von Liebig who had attended a meeting of the British Association at Liverpool in 1837. Lawes took out patents on manure mixtures and began a factory to manufacture them in 1843, the same year that Joseph Henry Gilbert replaced Dobson who had moved to Australia. Gilbert had trained under Liebig and with Lawes support, he launched the first of a series of long-term field experiments, some of which still continue.[3] Over 57 years, Lawes and Gilbert established the foundations of modern scientific agriculture and the principles of crop nutrition.

In 1902 Daniel Hall moved from Wye College to become director, taking a lower salary to join an establishment lacking money, staff, and direction. Hall decided that Rothamsted needed to specialise and was eventually successful in obtaining state support for agricultural research. In 1912 E. John Russell, who had come from Wye in 1907, took over as director until 1943, overseeing a major expansion in the 1920s, when Sir William Gammie Ogg took over until 1958 and increasing the number of staff from 140 to 471 and creating new biochemistry, nematology, and pedology departments. The site in Harpenden grew to cover 330 hectares (820 acres).[4]

Statistical science

Many distinguished scientists have been associated with Rothamsted. In 1919 Russell hired Ronald Fisher to investigate the possibility of analysing the vast amount of data accumulated from the "Classical Field Experiments." Fisher analysed the data and stayed to create the theory of experimental design, making Rothamsted a major centre for research in statistics and genetics. Among his appointments and successors in the Statistics department were Oscar Irwin, John Wishart, Frank Yates, William Cochran and John Nelder. Indeed, many consider Rothamsted to be the most important birthplace of modern statistical theory and practice.

The plaque commemorating 50 years of research, in front of the Russell Building
The plaque commemorating 50 years of research, in front of the Russell Building

Partly through these methods, researchers at Rothamsted have made significant contributions to agricultural science, including the discovery and development of systemic herbicides and pyrethroid insecticides, as well as pioneering contributions to the fields of virology, nematology, soil science and pesticide resistance. During World War II, aiming to increase crop yields for a nation at war, a team under the leadership of Judah Hirsch Quastel developed 2,4-D, still the most widely used weed-killer in the world.

Recent history

In 1987, Rothamsted, the Long Ashton Research Station, and Broom's Barn Experimental Station merged to form the Institute of Arable Crops Research (IACR). The Long Ashton Research Station was closed in 2002, with some of its staff moved to Rothamsted, whilst Broom's Barn is operated as an experimental farm for Rothamsted.

Rothamsted is now operated by a grouping of private organizations under the name of Rothamsted Research and is mainly funded by various branches of the UK government through the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Rothamsted Research supports around 350 scientists (including 50 visiting scientists), 150 administrative staff and 60 PhD students.[5]

As well as the Rothamsted site Rothamsted Research operates:[5]

  • Broom's Barn, a 120-hectare (300-acre) experimental farm near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, which is the UK's national centre for sugar beet research.
  • North Wyke, 250 hectares (620 acres) of grassland near Okehampton, Devon. It provides a "Farm Platform" allowing research teams to conduct experiments on three 25-hectare (62-acre) mini farms. It was formerly part of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research.

Its research program has four main areas:[6]

  • 20:20 Wheat: increasing wheat productivity to yield 20 (metric) tonnes per hectare in 20 years from the current nine tonnes per hectare in 2012.[7]
  • Cropping carbon: optimising carbon capture by grasslands and perennial energy crops, such as willow.
  • Designing seeds: improved health and nutrition through seeds.
  • Delivering sustainable systems: investigating sustainable agricultural systems to increase productivity while minimising environmental impact.

It also operates:

  • The Insect Survey: two national networks for monitoring insect populations in the UK.[8]
  • PHI-base: a database of multiple pathogen-host interactions.[9]

Discover more about History related topics

John Bennet Lawes

John Bennet Lawes

Sir John Bennet Lawes, 1st Baronet, FRS was an English entrepreneur and agricultural scientist. He founded an experimental farm at his home at Rothamsted Manor that eventually became Rothamsted Research, where he developed a superphosphate that would mark the beginnings of the chemical fertilizer industry.

Justus von Liebig

Justus von Liebig

Justus Freiherr von Liebig was a German scientist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. He has been described as the "father of the fertilizer industry" for his emphasis on nitrogen and trace minerals as essential plant nutrients, and his formulation of the law of the minimum, which described how plant growth relied on the scarcest nutrient resource, rather than the total amount of resources available. He also developed a manufacturing process for beef extracts, and with his consent a company, called Liebig Extract of Meat Company, was founded to exploit the concept; it later introduced the Oxo brand beef bouillon cube. He popularized an earlier invention for condensing vapors, which came to be known as the Liebig condenser.

Joseph Henry Gilbert

Joseph Henry Gilbert

Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert, Fellow of the Royal Society was an English chemist, noteworthy for his long career spent improving the methods of practical agriculture. He was a fellow of the Royal Society.

Alfred Daniel Hall

Alfred Daniel Hall

Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, FRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College.

E. John Russell

E. John Russell

Sir Edward John Russell was a British soil chemist, agriculture scientist, and director of Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1912 to 1943. He was responsible for hiring R A Fisher for statistical research at Rothamsted and driven by concerns over a lack of international information exchange about agriculture, he initiated the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, which later became the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux.

Biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and metabolism. Over the last decades of the 20th century, biochemistry has become successful at explaining living processes through these three disciplines. Almost all areas of the life sciences are being uncovered and developed through biochemical methodology and research. Biochemistry focuses on understanding the chemical basis which allows biological molecules to give rise to the processes that occur within living cells and between cells, in turn relating greatly to the understanding of tissues and organs, as well as organism structure and function. Biochemistry is closely related to molecular biology, which is the study of the molecular mechanisms of biological phenomena.

Nematode

Nematode

The nematodes or roundworms constitute the phylum Nematoda, with plant-parasitic nematodes also known as eelworms. They are a diverse animal phylum inhabiting a broad range of environments. Less formally, they are categorized as helminths, but are taxonomically classified along with arthropods, tardigrades and other moulting animals in the clade Ecdysozoa, and unlike flatworms, have tubular digestive systems with openings at both ends. Like tardigrades, they have a reduced number of Hox genes, but their sister phylum Nematomorpha has kept the ancestral protostome Hox genotype, which shows that the reduction has occurred within the nematode phylum.

Genetics

Genetics

Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms. It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar working in the 19th century in Brno, was the first to study genetics scientifically. Mendel studied "trait inheritance", patterns in the way traits are handed down from parents to offspring over time. He observed that organisms inherit traits by way of discrete "units of inheritance". This term, still used today, is a somewhat ambiguous definition of what is referred to as a gene.

Joseph Oscar Irwin

Joseph Oscar Irwin

Joseph Oscar Irwin was a British statistician who advanced the use of statistical methods in biological assay and other fields of laboratory medicine. Irwin's grasp of modern mathematical statistics distinguished him not only from older medical statisticians like Major Greenwood but contemporaries like Austin Bradford Hill.

John Wishart (statistician)

John Wishart (statistician)

John Wishart was a Scottish mathematician and agricultural statistician.

Frank Yates

Frank Yates

Frank Yates FRS was one of the pioneers of 20th-century statistics.

John Nelder

John Nelder

John Ashworth Nelder was a British statistician known for his contributions to experimental design, analysis of variance, computational statistics, and statistical theory.

GM protest

In 2012 Rothamsted started testing genetically modified wheat which had been modified to produce an aphid alarm pheromone produced by aphids when under attack to helps deter pests.[10] This trial attracted criticism from anti-GM groups and "about 200" people attempted to occupy the site on 27 May 2012.[11] They were prevented by a large police presence and the protest ended peacefully.[12] However one protester did trespass and damage the crop. The protester was later arrested, tried and fined £4,000.[13]

A video appeal by scientists at Rothamsted led to over 6,000 people signing a "Don't destroy research" petition organised by Sense about Science.[14] Sense about Science also organised a question and answer session with scientists.[15] The author Mark Lynas commented that Rothamsted's successful campaign may be a turning point for GMOs.[16]

The results published in 2015 showed that the trial wheat variety was no better than standard wheat varieties in deterring pests.[17]

People associated with Rothamsted

Directors

Source:[18]

Entomologists

Environmental meteorologists

Botanists

Chemists and biochemists

Some of the chemists associated with Rothamsted can be found by searching on Rothamsted on the Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970.[23]

Statisticians

Geologists and soil scientists

Librarians

  • Donald H. Boalch (1950-1962)

Discover more about People associated with Rothamsted related topics

John Bennet Lawes

John Bennet Lawes

Sir John Bennet Lawes, 1st Baronet, FRS was an English entrepreneur and agricultural scientist. He founded an experimental farm at his home at Rothamsted Manor that eventually became Rothamsted Research, where he developed a superphosphate that would mark the beginnings of the chemical fertilizer industry.

Alfred Daniel Hall

Alfred Daniel Hall

Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, FRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College.

E. John Russell

E. John Russell

Sir Edward John Russell was a British soil chemist, agriculture scientist, and director of Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1912 to 1943. He was responsible for hiring R A Fisher for statistical research at Rothamsted and driven by concerns over a lack of international information exchange about agriculture, he initiated the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, which later became the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux.

Horace Francis Barnes

Horace Francis Barnes

Horace Francis Barnes was an English entomologist who specialised in Diptera.

Colin Butler (entomologist)

Colin Butler (entomologist)

Colin Gasking Butler OBE FRS was a British entomologist who first isolated the pheromone, known as "queen substance", which attracts drones to queen bees.

Augustus Daniel Imms

Augustus Daniel Imms

Augustus Daniel Imms FRS was an English educator, research administrator and entomologist. An influential textbook of entomology that he first wrote went into several editions during his life and was updated posthumously with Imms' General Textbook of Entomology last being published in 1977 as a 10th edition.

John Monteith

John Monteith

John Lennox Monteith DSc, FRS was a British scientist who pioneered the application of physics to biology. He was an authority in the related fields of water management for agricultural production, soil physics, micrometeorology, transpiration, and the influence of the natural environment on field crops, horticultural crops, forestry, and animal production.

Howard Penman

Howard Penman

Howard Latimer Penman was a British meteorologist. He formulated Penman’s Formula, which is used worldwide by meteorologists and agricultural scientists to assess evaporation rates in different setups and locations in the world. With John Monteith he formulated the Penman–Monteith equation which is used to calculate evapotranspiration and the need for crop irrigation. Penman was a distinguished Rothamsted Research scientist and government advisor, and a well-known local figure in Harpenden.

F. M. L. Sheffield

F. M. L. Sheffield

Frances Marion Lina Sheffield OBE was an English botanist.

Katherine Warington

Katherine Warington

Katherine Warington was a botanist and the first person to show that boron, as boric acid, was essential for the healthy growth of plants.

George W. Cooke

George W. Cooke

George William Cooke CBE FRS was a British chemist. He was the deputy director of Rothamsted Experimental Station from 1962 until 1975, and Chief Scientific Officer of the Agricultural Research Council from 1975 until his retirement in 1981.

Joseph Henry Gilbert

Joseph Henry Gilbert

Sir Joseph Henry Gilbert, Fellow of the Royal Society was an English chemist, noteworthy for his long career spent improving the methods of practical agriculture. He was a fellow of the Royal Society.

Source: "Rothamsted Research", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, January 4th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothamsted_Research.

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Further Reading

Agricultural science

Harpenden

John Bennet Lawes

Jean-Baptiste Boussingault

History of agricultural science

Genetically modified crops

E. John Russell

Agricultural research in Israel

Genetically modified food controversies

Plant genetics

Rothamsted Manor

History of fertilizer

John A. Pickett

Hugh Loxdale

Mary Dilys Glynne
See also
References
  1. ^ "ROTHAMSTED RESEARCH LIMITED, registered charity no. 802038". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
  2. ^ Silvertown, J.; Poulton, P.; Johnston, E.; Edwards, G.; Heard, M.; Biss, P. M. (2006). "The Park Grass Experiment 1856-2006: Its contribution to ecology". Journal of Ecology. 94 (4): 801. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.589.7794. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2745.2006.01145.x. S2CID 23198088.
  3. ^ Russeli, E. John (1942). "Rothamsted and Its Experiment Station". Agricultural History. 16 (4): 161–183. ISSN 0002-1482. JSTOR 3739533.
  4. ^ "The History of Rothamsted Research". Rothamsted Research. Retrieved 2021-02-21.
  5. ^ a b "About Us". Rothamsted Research. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
  6. ^ "Introduction to the Research Strategy at Rothamsted". Rothamsted Research. Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 4 April 2012.
  7. ^ Ruitenberg, Rudy (2012-06-15). "U.K. Researchers Start Plan to Double Wheat Yields in 20 Years". Bloomberg Business. USA. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  8. ^ Harrington, Richard and Woiwod, Ian (February 2007) Foresight from hindsight: The Rothamsted Insect Survey Outlooks on Pest Management, Volume 18 , Number 1, Retrieved 22 May 2012
  9. ^ Winnenburg, R.; Urban, M.; Beacham, A.; Baldwin, T. K.; Holland, S.; Lindeberg, M.; Hansen, H.; Rawlings, C.; Hammond-Kosack, K. E.; Köhler, J. (2007). "PHI-base update: Additions to the pathogen host interaction database". Nucleic Acids Research. 36 (Database issue): D572–D576. doi:10.1093/nar/gkm858. PMC 2238852. PMID 17942425.
  10. ^ Ian Sample (27 May 2012). "The GM scientists' risky strategy that won public support". The Guardian.
  11. ^ David Shukman (27 May 2012). "GM trial survives - but 'war' goes on". BBC News.
  12. ^ Shiv Malik (27 May 2012). "Anti-GM protesters kept from tearing up wheat crop by police". The Guardian.
  13. ^ (19 July 2014) GM Crop Damage Fine ITV News, Retrieved 9 July 20915
  14. ^ "Don't Destroy Research Campaign". Sense about Science. Archived from the original on 14 August 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  15. ^ "Sense about Science Q&A". Sense about Science. Archived from the original on 18 October 2012. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  16. ^ Lynas, M. (2012). "Rothamsted's aphid-resistant wheat - a turning point for GMOs?". Agriculture & Food Security. 1: 17. doi:10.1186/2048-7010-1-17.
  17. ^ Case, Philip (27 June 2015). "9 questions about the GM wheat trial answered". Farmers Weekly. Surrey, UK. Retrieved 9 July 2015.
  18. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-11-05. Retrieved 2016-11-25.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  19. ^ Russell, E. J. (1942). "Alfred Daniel Hall. 1864-1942". Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society. 4 (11): 228–250. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1942.0018. S2CID 161964820.
  20. ^ Thornton, H. G. (1966). "Edward John Russell. 1872-1965". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 12: 456–477. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1966.0022.
  21. ^ "News".
  22. ^ "Angela Karp announced as new Director and CEO of Rothamsted Research". Rothamsted Research. Retrieved 2020-10-29.
  23. ^ "Biographical Database of the British Chemical Community, 1880-1970". The Open University. Archived from the original on 2012-02-04. Retrieved 29 August 2012.
  24. ^ Simons, Paul (2019-05-18). "Decline of 'nature's ploughs', the earthworm". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
  25. ^ Malvern, Jack (2019-02-23). "Modern farming is wiping out worms". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
  26. ^ Brown, Paul (2019-02-26). "Specieswatch: farmers fight to save Britain's disappearing earthworms". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
  27. ^ "Dearth of worms blamed for dramatic decline in UK songbird population". The Independent. 2019-02-24. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
  28. ^ Howard, Jules (2019-05-20). "It's not just about the bees – earthworms need love, too". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
Further reading
  • A History of Agricultural Science in Great Britain 1620-1954, by E. J. Russell (1966) London, George Allen & Unwin. Sir John Russell was a director of Rothamsted and his book emphasises the role of Rothamsted in the development of agricultural science in Britain.
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