SCIENCE AND SOIL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 429, 10 August 1928, Page 12

SCIENCE AND SOIL

ENGLISH EXPERIMENTS CAWTHRON LECTURE (Special to THE SUN) NELSON, Thursday. At the annual Cawthron Lecture delivered last evening by Sir John Russell, director of Rothamsted Experimental Station, England, an interesting review of the foundation and operation of the Roahtmsted Station was given. The first superphosphate was made there in a barn fitted up as a laboratory. For many years, said Sir John, the standard recognised fertilisers, the nitrogenous, the pliosphatic and the potassic, were regarded as sufficient for all crops, but recently a good deal of scientific research had been done on the influence of other elements. By using ammonium chloride instead of sulphate on barley crops a larger yield of grain was given. the chloride apparently stimulating the tillering. j The increase varied from 3 to 8 bushels per acre, and had been ob- j tained with wheat, barley and oats.

During the 86 years of the Broadbalk experiments on wheat there had been St> kinds of season and the yields had varied from year to year. The amount of variation was least with farmyard manure, and low with complete dressings of artificial fertilisers. It was greatest with incomplete fertilisers, but it was also large on the unmanured plot. This accorded with the general experience, that proper manuring increased not only the yield, but the certainty of a yield, and it emphasised the need of proper field experiments to guide farmers in their choice of fertilisers, and to save them from errors which might prove costly.