AGRICULTURE AND SCIENCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 December 1941, Page 4

AGRICULTURE AND SCIENCE

VALUE OF RESEARCH STATIONS.

There are people who are rude about research stations; and there are research stations, I daresay, which would like to be rude about people, writes Mr H. E. Bates, the naturalist. In some quarters agriculture and science are still very much at war. But the finest orchards near me, possibly the finest in all Kent, are the property of a man who is in constant and' close touch with the research station at East Mailing. Recently I spent a day at East Mailing—almost the only visitor of the day. Is the average gardener shy of research stations? Yet obviously research stations exist for the people. It is possible that the small grower thinks his problems too small for a research station to handle. But take fruit storage. The. large-scale method of storage by gas is expensive, out of reach of the man with a. couple of dozen trees. But East Mailing has just given a demonstration of a method of apple storage by dipping in a simple dilute oil solution—so that the life of an. apple is prolonged for four or six weeks —which will obviously by a godsend to the ordinary grower, especially in a glut year.