needed, thus providing a usefid guide 

 to designers of irrigation systems, and 

 assisting in determining when to irri- 

 gate. 



H. N. Colby devised plans for us- 

 ing a photoelectric cell for control of 

 poultry house lighting when natural 

 lighting conditions required supple- 

 mentation with artificial light. 



G. L. Byers and S. A. Miller stud- 

 ied the effect of tractor weight and 

 drive wheel slippage on soil compac- 

 tion. They found that rate of water 

 infiltration was influenced more by 

 slippage than by compaction and that 

 this decreased plant yield. Tractor 

 traffic was shown to damage legume 

 plants and reduce subsequent yield. 



J. J. Kolega, recognizing the criti- 

 cal nature of air temperatures for plant 

 grov^h and survival, animal and insect 

 development, building design etc., 

 developed air temperature guides for 

 New England based upon past official 

 records . He stressed that knowledge of 

 limits and frequency of different val- 

 ues was important for maximum use 

 of the environment. 



The department head from 1955 

 to 1962 was J. J. Kolega. Byers was 

 head until he transferred to the newly 

 created Department of Soil and Water 

 Science in 1963. 



Agronomy 



The quality of potatoes is associated 

 primarily with starch; increasing the 

 starch increases mealiness and there- 

 fore improves the quality whether 

 boiled or baked. F. S. Prince and P. T. 

 Blood found that potatoes from plots 

 that received potassium sulphate, not 

 the chloride or muriate of potash, had 

 the highest quality ratings. It was the 

 absence of chlorine, not the sulphur in 

 the sulphate of potash, which influ- 

 enced quality. Apparently, chlorine 



has a depressing effect on starch for- 

 mation. Potato quality was also in- 

 creased by planting a cover crop, but 

 decreased by the use of manure. 



R. Feuer, a graduate student, found 

 that because of recent past fertilization 

 many New Hampshire soils appear to 

 have adequate available potassium and 

 also "potassium supplying power." On 

 the other hand, graduate student W. H. 

 Mitchell determined thatboron,atrace 

 element, may be deficient (in water- 

 soluble form] in some New Hampshire 

 soils. Magnesium, another trace ele- 

 ment, was shown to be needed for 

 growth of potatoes, corn and apples, 

 but that heavy applications of manure 

 lessen the need for addition of magne- 

 sium. 



G. M. Dunn, plant geneticist, and 

 others, conducted variety trials of three 

 forages — smooth bromegrass, alfalfa, 

 and Ladino white clover — testing 

 them for adaptability, yield and resis- 

 tance to disease. Following these tests, 

 and based on observation of large dif- 

 ferences in the amount of infection 

 between individual bromegrass plants , 

 D. A. Emery and Dunn began selection 

 with the objective of breeding for resis- 

 tance to brown leaf spot, a fungal dis- 

 ease caused by Pyrenophora bromi. 

 Dunn, F. W. Calder and RA Kilpatrick, 

 plant pathologist with the U.S.D.A., 

 compared variation among the small, 

 medium and large types of white clo- 

 ver [Trifolium repens L.) and con- 

 cluded that strains and varieties of the 

 large type, such as Ladino, were supe- 

 rior to the other types for initiating a 

 clover breeding program for the north- 

 ern states. 



The effect of rate of nitrogen fer- 

 tilization and date of harvest on yield, 

 persistency of stand and nutritive value 

 of bromegrass hay was investigated by 

 a team and reported in Station Bulletin 



33 



