East Malling Research Station

The story of East Malling Research Station begins in 1913 when the Wye College Fruit Experiment Station was founded under Wellington, the first Director, as the result of representations by the fruitgrowers of Kent, Surrey and Sussex. At this time Spencer Pickering was demonstrating, on the Duke of Bedford’s Experimental Fruit Farm at Woburn, the wide field to be explored in the scientific study of fruit culture, and was already struggling with the great experimental difficulties arising from the heterogeneity of his plant material. The National Fruit and Cider Institute at Long Ashton, founded in 1903, was developing its work under Professor Barker while the John Innes Horticultural Institution, now in its new home at Bayfordbury, had been founded only two years before. The broad climatic distinctions between the fruitgrowing areas of the south east, in the heart of which East Malling is situated, and of those of the south west, served by the Long Ashton Research Station, are illustrated in figure 1, together with the acreage under tree fruits in each county. Wellington defined the task of the Experiment Station upon its foundation as ‘The study of problems which are met with in the actual culture of fruit trees and bushes.’ He emphasized the need for the study of the fundamental processes involved in the growth of the tree and pointed out that an essential preliminary was to identify and control the factors producing variation in growth, in yield, and in response to cultural treatments. He gave pride of place in the programme to the problems of rootstock effects, but work was also envisaged on propagation, on incompatibility and double working, on pruning and on manuring of tree fruits, while investigations on soft fruits and hops were also planned.