WOOL RESEARCH

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24913, 28 June 1946, Page 6

WOOL RESEARCH

INVESTIGATION BY COMMITTEE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE WORK INSPECTED An inspection of research work at Canterbury Agricultural College. Lincoln, was made yesteFday by members of the New Zealand Wool Board and the Wool Research Advisory Committee. The party had previously seen the work in progress at Ruakura and Dunedin, and later it will visit Wallaceville and Massey College. A visit was made to a 500-acre experimental farm at Kirwee, which was started by the Department of Agriculture in 1940 to study .the mortality of hoggets, as there had been, a particularly high death-rate in 1937-38. A member of the college staff told the party that the farm had been chosen because it was typical of a large part of Canterbury and at the same time had a bad history of sheep losses. Little information about sheep mortality had been obtained, because there had been no repetition of the trouble of 1937-38, but much valuable research work had been done. The farm was recently handed over to the college.

The party visited the wool metrology laboratory at the college and saw the results of progeny tests. Members of the staff escorted the party round the college farm and explained various aspects of research work that was being carried out with the sheep and wool. $

Some organisation was necessary to bridge the gap between the research worker and the man on the land, said Mr W. Horrobin, deputy-chairman of the New Zealand Wool Board. “Something in the nature of a field staff is required to interpret and explain to the man engaged in actual production the significance and practical application of new and helpful facts disclosed and established by research,” he said. “Men engaged in such work would require a thorough understanding of what the scientist had demonstrated on the one side, and on the other would need a practical appreciation of farmers’ problems.”

Mr Horrobin'' added that there was need for some agency to assemble and co-ordinate the results of research work, and to set it out in simple language in pamphlets and bulletins which could be available to the producer who needed specific information on some problem associated with his type of production. He paid a tribute to the work carried out at the college, and made Special mention of the agricultural work under the direction of the director. Professor E. R, Hudson. Members had been particularly interested in the progeny testing carried out at the college and in association with the farming community, to establish the value of direct sire breeding. At Ashley Dene, the party saw an experimental farm where a relatively poor class of land was brought by development into a high state of production.

Dr. 1. E. Coop, Professor of Animal Husbandry at the college, conducted the party on its tour.