Anton Arland

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Anton Arland (* July 20, 1895 in Eisenbrod , Bohemia , † February 23, 1975 in Leipzig ) was a German crop scientist .

Life path

Anton Arland, the son of a public school director, studied agriculture at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna in 1917 and 1918 , then at the University of Leipzig , where he received his doctorate in 1923 with a thesis on flying oat brandy . He then attended an educational seminar in Leipzig. The lessons given here about the influence of the environment on the regional distribution of animal races motivated him to write a book about it, which was published in 1925 under the title Introduction to agricultural racial studies on a pedological and climatic basis .

From 1925 Arland worked as an assistant at the Institute for Plant Cultivation and Plant Breeding at the University of Leipzig, headed by Adolf Zade . Here he mainly dealt with the water balance of cultivated plants and completed his habilitation in 1928 for the entire field of agricultural studies. He stayed at the University of Leipzig as a private lecturer. When Adolf Zade had to resign from office because of his Jewish origins in 1933, Arland refused to become his successor. Instead, he accepted a call to the agricultural department of the Prague German Technical University in Tetschen-Liebwerd , where he was appointed associate professor for plant production, vegetable and fruit growing. As director of the institute of the same name, he represented the entire field of arable and crop production here until 1945.

After the reopening of the University of Leipzig in 1946, Arland took over as full professor and director of the Institute for Arable and Crop Production. Here he worked until his retirement in 1961. In the first post-war years he made a special contribution to rebuilding agricultural teaching and research at the University of Leipzig. From 1949 to 1951 he was dean of the Philosophical Faculty, to which agricultural science still belonged at the time. Arland died as a result of a traffic accident.

Research priorities

Anton Arland's main research topic was the water balance of cultivated plants. In his habilitation thesis The problem of the water balance in agricultural crops in critical-experimental consideration (1928) he describes for the first time a new method of transpiration measurement , the " wilting method ", which has remained associated with his name from then on. With this method, plants are taken from the ground, weighed, placed in special racks to wither and weighed again after a specified time. The relative transpiration of the plants is determined from the weight difference. This provides information on how to assess the effect of plant cultivation measures (tillage, fertilization, irrigation, etc.) on the yield of the crops.

With great commitment, Arland continued these experiments on the physiology of perspiration in cultivated plants in Tetschen-Liebwerd (1935–1945). The "water question" of the crops remained the central research topic for him. Of the publications he published during this period, the text The Experimental Evidence of the Relationship between Water Consumption and Nutrition in Grains, which was crowned and published by the Fürstlich Jablonowski Society in Leipzig in 1936, deserves special mention .

After the Second World War, Arland at the Institute for Arable and Plant Production at the University of Leipzig further improved its wilting method and expanded it into a field determination method on a broad basis. More than 50 of his 149 scientific publications deal with this method. Noteworthy are his writings Feverish plants - more bread? On New Ways to Increase Crop Yields (1953) and Tyranny of the Earth. A Problem in Modern Agriculture (1959). Even if not all specialist colleagues shared the conclusions drawn from his research, Arland has given perspiration research lasting impulses with his "wilting method". For decades, the "Arland School" was also a household name in international agricultural science.

honors and awards

Main publications

  • The oat brandy, Ustilago avenae (Pers.) Jens. Biological investigations with special consideration of the questions of infection and susceptibility . Diss. Phil. Leipzig 1923. - Zugl. in: Botanisches Archiv Vol. 7, 1924, pp. 70–111.
  • Introduction to agricultural racial science on a pedological and climatic basis . Max Jänecke Verlagbuchhandlung Leipzig 1925.
  • The problem of the water balance in agricultural crops in a critical-experimental view . Phil. Habil.-Schr. Univ. Leipzig 1928. - Zugl. in: Scientific Archive for Agriculture Dept. A, Archive for Plant Cultivation Vol. 1, 1929, pp. 1–160 u. Vol. 2, 1929, pp. 423-433.
  • Experimental evidence of the relationship between water consumption and nutrition in cereals . Award publications crowned and published by the Fürstlich Jablonowski'schen Gesellschaft zu Leipzig, Vol. 53. Paul Parey Publishing House, Berlin 1936.
  • Aims and tasks of research in the field of crop production . In: Deutsche Akademiker-Zeitung, vol. 28, 1936, No. 10, pp. 3–4.
  • The transpiration intensity of the plants as the basis for the determination of optimal arable and plant cultivation measures. A new way to increase crop yields . Treatises of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Mathematical and Natural Science Class, Vol. 44, No. 2, 1952. - Zugl. under the title: " Feverish" plants - more bread? On new ways to increase crop yields . Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1953.
  • The wilting method in the service of agriculture. The transpiration intensity of the plants in the focus of the determination of optimal cultivation measures . Conference report. Edited and edited by Anton Arland. German publishing house of the sciences Berlin 1955.
  • A contribution to the wilting method . Meeting reports of the German Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Berlin, Vol. 5, No. 6, 1956.
  • "Tyranny of the Earth". A problem of modern agriculture . Treatises of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig, Mathematical and Natural Science Class Bd. 46, No. 3, 1959.

literature

  • CV of Prof. Dr. Anton Arland, Director of the Agricultural Institute for Arable and Crop Production at Leipzig University . In: The nutrition of the plant vol. 52, pp. 156-161 (with picture).
  • Prof. Dr. Anton Arland 65 years . In: Die Deutsche Landwirtschaft Vol. 11, 1960, p. 413.
  • Klaus Dört u. GW: Anton Arland. July 20, 1895 - February 23, 1975 . In: Yearbook of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig 1975-1976. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1979, pp. 203-213 (with picture and list of publications).
  • Ruth Zwicker: Anton Arland (1895-1975) . In: Well-known university professors at the Karl Marx University of Leipzig, Vol. 6, 1984, pp. 7-16 (with picture).
  • Erdmann Röhlig: Anton Arland (1895-1975) . In: Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science Vol. 175, 1955, pp. 135-136 (with picture).

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Arland, Anton
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German crop scientist
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Iron bread
DATE OF DEATH 23rd February 1975
Place of death Leipzig