Rothamsted Research

Two of the station's best known and longest-running experiments are the Broadbalk Experiment, planted annually with winter wheat since 1843, and the Park Grass Experiment, a biological study that started in 1856 and has been continuously monitored ever since.

51°48′33″N 0°21′19″W / 51.80917°N 0.35528°W

History

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.

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's support, he launched the first of a series of long-term field experiments, some of which still continue. 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).

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, Winifred Mackenzie and John Nelder. Indeed, many consider Rothamsted to be the most important birthplace of modern statistical theory and practice.

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. Rothamsted Research supports around 300 scientists (including 50 visiting scientists), 100 administrative staff and 40 PhD students.

As well as the Rothamsted site Rothamsted Research operates:

• 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 programme has five main areas:

• Delivering Sustainable Wheat: a co-ordinated and collaborative initiative led by the John Innes Centre to address critical challenges in wheat health, yield, and production in order to safeguard the future of this vital crop.
• Green Engineering: advancing and exploiting understanding of genetic intervention and metabolic regulation to deliver high value plant products and germplasm for health, nutrition, and a more sustainable future.
• Resilient Farming Futures: combining primary and secondary data, in vivo and in silico experiments, and the development of data science and decision-making tools, to forearm the farming sector and additional stakeholders.
• Growing Health: Towards healthier agro-ecosystems.
• AgZero+: supporting the UK’s transition towards home-grown food production that is sustainable, carbon-neutral and has a positive effect on nature (led by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology).

It also operates:

• The Long Term Experiments and e-RA:The oldest continuing agricultural field experiments in the world. Seven of these Long-term Experiments (LTEs) continue today and provide an invaluable resource for scientists.The online e-RA brings the data from the classical and other long-term experiments into an accessible and useable database.
• The Insect Survey: two national networks for monitoring insect populations in the UK.
• PHI-base - the multi-species pathogen-host interaction database in 2025.