2=;8 



NATURE 



[October 20, 1921 



National Institute of Agricultural Botany. 



'pHE King and Oufen paid an informal visit to the 

 ■•■ headquarters of the National Institute of Agri- 

 cultural Botany at Cambridge on Friday, October 14. 

 They were accompanied by Princess Mary, and the 

 suite included the Minister of Agriculture, Sir Arthur 

 Griffith-Boscawen. Their Majesties were received at 

 the institute by Sir Lawrence Weaver, chairman of the 

 institute, and Lady Weaver and Mrs. Brinton, chair- 

 man and founder of the Housing Association for 

 Oflkers' Families, by which the fourteen houses ad- 

 joining the institute have been built for the accommo- 

 dation of officers' widows and disabled officers. After 

 the presentation of a number of visitors and members of 

 the council of the institute, the Royal party were con- 

 ducted round the buildings bv Sir Lawrence and Lady 

 Weaver and the director of the institute, Mr. Wilfred 

 H. Parker. They were shown an exhibit of wheats 

 and bar.eys by Prof. Biffen and Mr. E. S. Beaven, 

 the different processes of seed-testing by Mr. C. B. 

 Saunders, chief officer of the Official Seed Testing 

 Station, and a collection of potatoes arranged by Dr. 

 Salaman and Mr. H. Bryan, the superintendent of the 

 Potato Testing Station, Ormskirk. The Royal party 



Flc. I.— National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Cambridge, 



were then conducted to the council room, where thev 

 made the first entries in the visitors' book, and, after 

 the King had planted a mulberry tree in front of the 

 institute to commemorate his visit, inspected the 

 domestic quarters. Mrs. Brinton then took their 

 Majesties to visit the houses occupied by officers' 

 widows, in front of which a second mulberry tree was 

 planted by the Queen. 



The necessity for such an organisation as the insti- 

 tute became very apparent during the latter vears of 

 the war, when the imperative need for an increase of 

 food production led the Government to introduce a 

 measure of seed control. This resulted in the estab- 

 lishment, in the autumn of 1917, of the English 

 Official Seed Testing Station, and it was from the 

 study of Continental methods of seed control that the 

 National Institute of Agricultural Botany came to be 

 founded in the early part of 1919 by Sir Lawrence 

 Weaver, now the Second Secretary of the Ministry 

 of Agriculture and Fisheries, who has been respon- 

 sible for the administration of the new control of seeds. 

 The institute has been modelled generally on the lines 

 of the famous Svalof organisation in South Sweden. 

 NO. 2712, VOL. 108I 



The institute was constituted as a charitable trust. 

 Large contributions to the trust fund were received 

 from Sir Robert McAlpine and Sons, Viscount Elve- 

 den, members of the agricultural seed trade of the 

 United Kingdom, the milling industry, and other 

 agricultural trades, while a generous gift of a 334-acre 

 farm at St. Ives, Huntingdon, was made by Mr. 

 Fred Hiam, of Cambridge. The national importance 

 of the scheme was recognised by the Development 

 Commissioners, who have provided a grant on the iL 

 for iL basis. 



The director of the institute, Mr. W. H. Parker, 

 was appointed in April, 1920. Prof. R. H. Biffen, 

 the director of the Plant Breeding Institute at Cam- 

 bridge University, is one of the vice-presidents of the 

 institute, and works in the closest co-operation with it. 

 The institute's headquarters buildings have only 

 recently been completed, and were formally opened 

 bv Sir Lawrence Weaver on Friday, October 7. They 

 are situated in Huntingdon Road, Cambridge, about 

 i^ miles from the town, and were designed by Mr. 

 P. Morlev Horder. The thirty acres surrounding the 

 buildings' will be utilised as a trial ground. In addi- 

 tion to this, the institute owns the 

 Hiam Farm, St. Ives, Hunting- 

 donshire, referred to above, and a 

 farmhouse and 39 acres of good 

 market land at Ormskirk, Lan- 

 cashire, which are used as the 

 Potato Testing Station. 



The work of the institute is 

 divided into three main branches : — 

 (a) T h e Crop Improvement 

 Branch. — The improvement of farm 

 crops will be achieved by the test- 

 ing of promising new and re-selected 

 varieties of all kinds of plants of the 

 farm which may be handed to the 

 institute by the Plant Breeding In- 

 stitute of Cambridge University, 

 other similar organisations, and in- 

 dividual plant-breeders, the multi- 

 plication of those stocks which 

 have shown the best results as to 

 vield and quality, and the subse- 

 quent marketing through existing 

 trade channels of those varieties 

 which, after further close observa- 

 tion, are approved by the insti- 

 tute. The growing-on of the new varieties to a com- 

 mercial scale will be undertaken at the Hiam Farm, 

 St. Ives, and also bv contract with farmers in different 

 parts of the country. 



(b) The Official Seed Testing Station for England 

 and Wales. — The administration of the English 

 Official Seed Testing Station has been delegated to 

 the 'institute by the Ministry of Agriculture. The 

 greater part of the headquarters buildings at Cam- 

 bridge is now occupied by the Seed Testing Station, 

 which had hitherto — since its formation — been in- 

 adequatelv housed in temporary premises in London. 

 The station is now the largest and best-planned in 

 the world. 



(c) The Potato Testing Station.— The institute 

 carries out at its Ormskirk station the highly impor- 

 tant potato immunity trials, which establish the im- 

 munitv or otherwise of different varieties of potatoes 

 from the great scourge of wart disease. This work 

 is delegated to it bv the Ministry of Agriculture, but 

 the institute also holds trials to establish the time 

 of maturity, yield, and quality of potatoes. 



Svnonymity in potato varieties has long been a 



