Empire Marketing Board Research Articles

University and Educational Intelligence

CAMBRIDGE.—The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries has informed the secretary of the School of Agriculture that a grant not exceeding £3000 has been sanctioned by the Empire Marketing Board for the provision of buildings to investigate the use of B.C.G. vaccine in the protection of calves against tuberculosis.

Development Commission Report, 1927–281

THE reports of the Development Commission show how great a stimulus the Development Fund has been to research in agriculture and horticulture since its introduction in 1911. Grants-in-aid prior to this were dispensed with a meagre hand, hence major investigations requiring a large equipment and manifold repetition, as in the case of animal diseases, could scarcely be carried on. This eighteenth report conveys, however, an impression that the progeny of the Fund have become too numerous, and that the expansion inevitable in scientific investigations has outrun the capacity of the Fund. Thus large supplementary grants have been given by the Empire Marketing Board to the Welsh and Scottish Plant Breeding Stations for buildings, etc., to research in woollen industries, and to agricultural economics research at Oxford.

British Food Journal Volume 30 Issue 12 1928

British Food Journal Volume 30 Issue 12 1928

Gifts for the University of Cambridge

THE Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge has announced that in answer to the University's application, a formal letter of gift is being prepared by the International Education Board, offering £700,000 to the University on the conditions and for the objects already announced (NATURE, Oct. 20, p. 632). One condition is the raising by the University from other sources of a sum of £229,000, and the Vice-Chancellor is able to announce munificent offers from the Government, the Empire Marketing Board, and the Royal Agricultural Society, amounting to £101,000 in all, of which £85,000 goes towards the sum required. The offers are conditional upon the remaining £144,000 being secured, but they will come as the greatest possible encouragement to the Committee charged with the task of securing to the University the magnificent opportunity presented to it by the munificent offer of the Rockefeller International Education Board.

The Empire Marketing Board and Scientific Research

The Empire Marketing Board and Scientific Research

Needs of Empire

THE many recommendations submitted to and passed by the delegates of the recent Imperial Agricultural Research have a familiar ring. In substance they are almost identical with those endorsed dy the delegates to the Colonial Office Conference hold earlier in the year, and in principle they do not differ from those which were submitted to the Imperial Conference of 1926 by the Research Sub-Committee over which Lord Balfour presided, or those contained in the Report of the Imperial Agricultural Research Committee which was published this year Unfortunately, this Conference, like those which preceded it, has not been able to base its recommendations upon an assured income guaranteed by the Imperial Parliament or the beneficiary governments of the Empire. It has not even been definitely promised that necessary financial provision will be made for any part of the programme of activities outlined in the recommendations. The Conference had to be content with vague hints that support for various schemes of scientific research and technical development would be forthcoming from the Empire Marketing Board, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and other bodies with public funds at their disposal, and the expressed hope that Dominions and other overseas governments might be found willing to contribute to a central fund.

Imperial Agricultural Research

IT is distinctly unfortunate that the first seven plenary sessions of the imperial Agricultural Research Conference were held during the week in which two political paries held their annual conferences. The subject matter under discussion at the research conference is of the greatest significance to an Empire in which the foremost industry is agriculture and the future of which depends wholly upon the progressive realisation of the vast potential resources of the lands which it embraces. Nothing has been left undone by the Empire Marketing Board and the Ministry of Agriculture to emphasise these two points. The reports, memoranda, and pamphlets which they have prepared and distributed to the delegates present for their information and guidance in discussing the various items on the agenda are calculated to interest a wide public, and would undoubtedly have been extensively used by the Press for this purpose had the meetings to which they refer been held a week earlier. It can scarcely be expected, however, that the Press will give undue prominence to a conference dealing with such impersonal and serious questions as those relating to the influence of scientific research upon our economic position, unless they are dealt with in a brilliantly illuminating and arresting manner and by speakers who have attained a position in popular esteem which rivals that held by the leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party respectively.

British Food Journal Volume 29 Issue 9 1927

British Food Journal Volume 29 Issue 9 1927

Irrigation and Crops1

THE deleterious effect of irrigation on the soil, and therefore on the crops grown when it is not duly balanoa by drainage, are described simply and clearly in an important memorandum drawn up by Dr. B. A. Keen, of Rothamsted, for the Empire Marketing Board. The memorandum is the work of an experienced soil physicist, and deals in summary form with the chemical and physical reasons for the accumulation of soluble salts on the surface of the ground, usually but somewhat erroneously described as ‘alkali.’ Such concentration can, obviously, only take place where there is great evaporation of soil moisture, but little or no rain to wash the salts away, and the parts of the world where these conditions prevail are somewhat clearly defined. Taking the rainfall map as our guide, it can be seen at a glance that the amount of rain falling in the temperate and tropical regions is generally what may be called ample for crop production. But, round about and just outside the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, belts of little rain or deserts are met with in the Old World, while in the New such tracts are confined more or less to the western sides of the continents. These conditions are due, in the main, to the distribution of the ocean winds and currents. Clear skies are met with in these tracts, which in the local summer are connoted with intense heat and great evaporation of the soil moisture; whereas within the tropics the amount of cloud is much greater, the retarding force of the sun on vegetation is less, and a greater amount of rain falls.

News and Views

THE Colonial Office Conference at its meeting on May 27 adopted the Report of Committee A on Colonial Scientific and Research Services. The committee restricted its inquiry to the three major groups of applied science affecting the non-selfgoverning Dependencies—namely, medicine, agriculture with its auxiliary branches, and veterinary science and forestry. Since, however, in most of these territories agriculture, including stock-raising, is the principal occupation of the populations, the committee has dealt chiefly in its report with the organisation of the agricultural services. It recommends the constitution of a central council with a chairman appointed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies (who should be a layman), a director (who should be a scientific worker of standing), and a deputy-director (with Colonial administrative experience). The functions of the council should be to make recommendations to the Secretary of State in regard to the broad lines of research programmes, the establishment and maintenance of a chain of Imperial research stations, the creation of a clearing-house of information, the organisation of a pool of scientific workers, and the organisation and general principles of administration of a Colonial Agricultural Research Service. Liaison is to be established and maintained with the Empire Marketing Board, the Medical Research Council, and any other body already existing or set up for the prosecution and encouragement of research of importance to the Dependencies. Although the committee recommends the immediate establishment of distinct services for medical, agricultural, and forestry research, and so on, the possibility of their eventual fusion into one common research service is not discounted. In the formation of the Colonial Agricultural Research Service the committee states that the following condition should be fulfilled: it must be well paid, the members of the service should be liable to transfer, but an officer entering the service must be safeguarded against any loss on transfer.

University and Educational Intelligence

CAMBRIDGE.—An offer has been made of 25,000l. by the Empire Marketing Board, through the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, for the building and equipping of an extension of the Low Temperature Research Station.