AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY.

RESEARCH AND EDUCATION.

The grants made from the Development Fund for Research and Education in connection with the agricultural industry may be classified under the following six headings:

1. The maintenance of a number of institutions for carrying out scientific investigation. To each of these Research Institutes or Stations certain groups of problems are assigned, on which the main energies of the workers are concentrated. Aid in building and equipping research stations is also given, usually on the £ for £ principle.

2. A consultative staff of scientific men for advising farmers in their technical difficulties is maintained. This Service-known as the Advisory Service-is now associated with seventeen University Departments of Agriculture, or Agricultural Colleges, in different parts of the country.

3. Special Research Grants are made for limited periods to individual research workers for the purpose of pro

viding them with skilled assistance, or with the equipment necessary for their work.

4. Fellowships are given to enable members of the staffs of the Research and Advisory Services to travel and study the methods adopted by other scientific workers; and Scholarships are awarded for the purpose of assisting promising young graduates to acquire some training in research methods.

5. Aid is given for such educational purposes as the building and equipment of Colleges (as a rule, grants from the Fund do not exceed 50 per cent. of the cost); or for the extension work of Colleges and for Farm Institutes and classes provided by Local Education Authorities. 6. Grants are made for a limited number of other schemes put forward by the Departments of Agriculture, or by approved agencies for furthering knowledge in agricultural science or practice.

Two methods of making grants from the Fund are adopted: (1) The sums approved by the Commissioners may be paid by the Treasury to the institution or association undertaking the work for which the grant is made; in this case the grants are transmitted through the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries in England and Wales, and the Board of Agriculture in Scotland

(2) Grants may be made on the recommendation of the Commissioners to the Agricultural Departments themselves, who may either use them for carrying out a particular scheme, or may distribute them to institutions collaborating in comprehensive schemes. This is the usual method of making advances.

The method of payment in the case of each grant is shown in Appendix I, pp. 142-150. It may be mentioned that in England and Wales grants of £344,746 out of a total of £347,435 recommended for purposes of research and education were made direct to the Ministry, and that in Scotland grants of £23,621 out of a total of £24,721 were made to the Scotch Board.

In comparing sums granted for schemes in England and Wales and in Scotland in 1923-24, especially grants for the extension of buildings and equipment, it should be noted that most of the English extensions were provided out of the new Fund; this Fund does not apply to Scotland, the sum of £150,000 having been paid to the Scotch Board, out of the moneys provided under the Corn Production Acts (Repeal) Act, 1921, as the equivalent of £850,000 paid into the Development Fund for expenditure in England and Wales.

RESEARCH INSTITUTES AND EXPERIMENTAL STATIONS.

In England and Wales grants are payable to Research Institutes in respect of the Academic year ending 30th September, whereas grants to the Ministry are for the financial year ending 31st March. The practice is for the Ministry, in consultation with Directors of Institutes, to estimate as closely as possible the expenditure in the coming academic year. With this information the Ministry submits, in the autumn of each year, a detailed estimate to the Commissioners, on whose report Your Lordships authorise the amount that may be placed on the Ministry's Parliamentary Estimates. This procedure ensures that a figure closely approximating to the total sum of money necessary appears on the Estimates submitted to Parliament. As the academic and financial years do not coincide, slight excesses, or deficiencies, in the sum available in any financial year may be compensated for in the next. At the present time the practice of the Ministry is to pay to Institutes such sum, not exceeding an authorised total, as their accounts, on examination, show to be necessary.

The amounts shown, in the case of each English institution in the reports which follow, give the maxima available for the particular Station in the two academic years 1922-23 and 1923-24. On these maxima the grants which the Commissioners recommended to be paid over to the Ministry were based.

The total sum recommended as grants to the Ministry for the maintenance of the work of Institutes and Stations in England and Wales in the academic year 1922-23 was £91,508, and in the academic year 1923-24 £122,706. The grants in respect of

capital expenditure and equipment of Institutes and Stations. amounted to £76,225 in 1922-23, and in 1923-24 to £53,537.

In addition to the above-mentioned sums for Institutes and Stations, grants amounting to £18,445 were recommended to the Ministry for purposes noticed in this section of the Report. The most important being £10,000 to the Committee set up to investigate Foot-and-Mouth Disease, and £3,500 for the maintenance of crop improvement work at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany.

In Scotland, as in England, grants have hitherto been made to Institutes in respect of work during the academic year ending 30th September; but for administrative purposes the Board of Agriculture now require all accounts to be made up for the financial year. In consequence of the change grants for six months only were in some instances recommended from the Development Fund in the year under report.

The grants for maintenance to Stations in Scotland amounted to £10,970 in 1922-23 and to £11,190 in 1923-24.

A statement of the grants from the Development Fund to each Scottish institution is included in the brief reports on their work which are given below.

Rothamsted Experimental Station, Lawes Agricultural Trust, Harpenden, Herts.

The work at Rothamsted falls logically into three main groups, concerned respectively with the cultivation of the soil, the feeding of the crops, and the maintenance of healthy conditions of plant life. Broadly speaking, the problems associated with the first and second group fall within the scope of the departments concerned with soil and plant nutrition, and those of the remaining group are dealt with by the departments associated with plant pathology. The distinction is, however, only a formal one of classification. In practice the problems are so closely interlocked that no distinctions can be drawn and many investigations are conducted jointly by workers in apparently very diverse subjects.

The Physical Department has continued its work on problems of soil cultivation. The direct bearing of physical and physicochemical factors in all questions relating to soil tilth is not only of great importance in this country, but is fundamental in the tropical and sub-tropical portions of the Empire. During the past year dynamometer records have been taken whenever it was possible to fit them in with the ordinary farm operations. These records are showing the work actually done by implements under different conditions of use and the effect of manures on the ease of cultivation. This line of attack will give information on the general field relations associated with soil cultivation, while in the laboratory, investigations into evaporation of water from soil,

vapour pressures, flocculation and dispersion studies, shrinkage of soil, etc., carried out with the view of characterising tilth, show the end to be aimed at.

Many other factors operate besides those discussed in determining the final yield of the crop. The Statistical Department has devised special mathematical methods of tracing the effect of these factors, and is continuing the study of the yields from Hoosfield permanent barley plots along the same lines as the already published work on wheat, as part of the main scheme of investigating the correlations between weather and crop yields under different manurial treatments, with the ultimate but still remote purpose of constructing tables for the expectancy of crop yield under given conditions.

The production and supply of plant food material in the soil is receiving much attention. For some time past the investigations have emphasised the fact that mixtures of artificial manures, however good, do not have the same effect on plant growth as farmyard manure. The clover crop of 1923 has confirmed a result obtained here earlier that farmyard manure has a beneficial effect on clover; this is being closely investigated in the bacteriological laboratory. Farmyard manure contains not only the ordinary elements of nutrition, but many others found only in small quantities in plants. These are studied in the Botanical Department it is shown that they are needed in small amounts only, but that some of the effects on plant growth are remarkable. Beans and certain other crops were found to make very unsatisfactory growth in water culture without a small addition of boron, even though the ordinary complete fertiliser" was given. A fuller investigation, however, will be possible when the chemical and biochemical processes concerned in the decomposition of farmyard manure are better known. These are being studied both in the Chemical and Bacteriological Departments, but the work is tedious; the methods are, however, being steadily improved. This problem is intimately bound up with that of green manuring, which is being studied simultaneously.

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The biological activity in the soil is, of course, closely connected with the above work, and, as in previous years, many investigations are in progress to elucidate the complex relations. between the component parts of the micro-organic population and their environment. The development of a quantitative technique, susceptible to a statistical control, is proceeding rapidly. In the Bacteriological Department the new medium for plate counts is being examined to ascertain the relation between density and inhibition of colonies; work in the Protozoological Department having shown no apparent relation between the numbers of protozoa and their environment, a physiological study of the changes in the organisms (reproductive rates, etc.) has been instituted; the development of quantitative studies on algæ and fungi is an exceedingly difficult problem, but some very encouraging work is under way in the Mycological Department. Broadly speaking, it may be said that in all the above-mentioned sections.

of the work exact quantitative methods are now being developed, capable of giving results of an accuracy which seemed impossible of attainment ten years ago. The whole history of science shows that rapid advances may be expected when development has reached this stage.

The work of the Insecticides and Fungicides Department is making rapid progress. Both natural and synthetic substances are being tested. An apparatus for evaluating insecticides has been constructed and is giving useful quantitative comparisons of the toxicities of different compounds. It has been found that some highly toxic substances are injurious to plants, while closely related substances are comparatively innocuous. A closer study will be made as to the reasons for this difference, and it is hoped to extend the work to the investigation of the part played in insecticidal action by such factors as surface tension and viscosity and the fineness of division of toxic particles in the spray fluids.

Field experiments in the control of injurious factors are being continued, both under greenhouse and field conditions. The cooperative work with the Mycological Department on the wart disease of potatoes, although not conclusive last year, was sufficiently good to warrant a repetition during the coming season. Laboratory work in connection with this problem has given rise to some important results. The great technical difficulties of making grafting experiments on potatoes have been successfully overcome and it has been shown that, while immunity of the tuber is unaffected by the aerial parts of the plant, certain other qualities are. The work has indicated that an important line of attack from the biochemical side is an examination of the protein constituents of the tuber, and this will be followed up.

A series of investigations on various plant pests has been carried out by the Entomological Department.

The life history of the gout fly of barley has been worked out Remedial measures are not yet possible, but preventive measures aimed at stimulating the growth of the ear and ear-bearing proclivities of the plant have been shown to have a markedly beneficial effect in reducing infestation. These measures consist in early sowing and the application of superphosphate or farmyard manure. One allied line of work that has now been developed to important dimensions is the investigation and breeding out of parasites of injurious insects, with special reference to certain species of the latter that are common in this country and have become established in certain of the British Dominions. The natural parasitic enemies are apparently not present in the countries concerned, and the insect pests have increased to very large numbers and the ordinary methods of control are not effective. Parasites are being bred and despatched abroad in attempts to control by these means the common earwig, and the pear-saw fly in New Zealand, the wheat stem-saw fly in Canada, Glossina palpalis, a carrier of the Trypanosome of sleeping sickness in