East Malling Research

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Orchard in East Malling

East Malling Research is a fruit growing research institute; it is in East Malling and Larkfield in the English county of Kent . It is best known for originating from East Malling documents in orchards. The rootstock, which includes, for example, the widespread M9 apple variety used exclusively as rootstock , shape commercial cultivation.

In East Malling, the first attempts were made to store apples under a controlled atmosphere , in which they can be stored for months with almost no oxygen. A few dozen types of fruit, mainly apples, which are now commercially grown around the world, come from East Malling.

The institute was founded in 1913 on the initiative of local fruit growers, was state-owned for decades and has been privately organized since 2005. Since the 1980s, the institute has been subject to repeated massive cuts and restructuring. In the course of its hundred-year history, the name and organizational structure of the facility changed again and again, so that it was formerly also known as Wye College Fruit Experimental Station , East Malling Research Station , Institute of Horticultural Research (IHR), or Horticultural Research International (HRI). Colloquially, the name of the station is therefore usually only given as East Malling , without any further additions.

history

Bradbourne House. Former headquarters, today mostly rented out to third parties

The story of East Malling Research began at the end of the heyday of British apple growing. In the second half of the 19th century and around the turn of the century, numerous private breeders such as Richard Cox and the Laxton Brothers bred thousands of new apple varieties and brought them onto the market. Since the turn of the century, the industry changed and the breeds became scientifically. Before East Malling, scientific experimental stations for fruit cultivation had already been established in Long Ashton in south-west England (1903, The National Fruit and Cider Institute ) and Bayfordbury north of London (1912, the John Innes Horticultural Institution ). The fruit growers of the English south-east, and in particular those of the county of Kent, were exerting pressure that research should also be carried out in their region. In 1913, Wye College, in partnership with the Board of Agriculture , leased land from Kent County Council. The beginnings of the institute were funded by the Kent Incorporated Society for the Promotion of Experiments in Horticulture , an association of regional fruit growers. The institute initially had 22 acres of land in East Malling to set up a fruit growing research facility.

The Wye College Fruit Experimental Station took in 1914, under its Director Wellington to work on. After Wellington moved to World War I in 1914 , he was replaced by RG Hatton. Hatton remained director in East Malling for 35 years and shaped the institute. In 1921 the institute gained its independence and operated as The East Malling Research Station of the Kent Incorporated Society for Promoting Experiments in Horticulture . Around 1925, friends and patrons of the institute set up a foundation, which is now called the East Malling Trust for Horticultural Research , to secure basic financial support for the institution.

Systematisation and cultivation of documents

Various documents from the Malling series

East Malling received numerous documents when it was founded , mainly from France. Since apple varieties cannot be propagated from seeds - the fruits from the seeds would belong to a new variety - they are grafted onto rootstocks: the root and lower trunk are of one variety, the rest of the tree of another. Some of the documents have existed for several hundred years, but at the beginning of the 20th century were mostly only distributed locally, had different names, and overall there was little overview. The documents brought to East Malling were also not systematized and mostly neither described nor specially marked. The first big undertaking was the classification and sorting of the documents, which were common in Europe at the time. Over the course of several years, the institute systematized and classified documents. From the most promising of the documents examined, the “M” series emerged, which still characterizes the cultivation today. The M9 , which was used worldwide, was the ninth of these systematized documents from France. However, the aphid-resistant rootstocks of the MM101 to MM115 series were bred directly in East Malling - in collaboration with the John Innes Institute in Merton; also from East Malling, in cooperation with the institute in Long Ashton, the virus-free documents of the EMLA series come.

Development of the CA warehouse

The experiments to develop the CA camp took place in the Ditton Laboratory.

In 1929 the Ditton Laboratory opened, a few kilometers away in Ditton , but part of the institute. The laboratory expanded the scientific research possibilities considerably. The researcher Cyril West went entirely from Cambridge to East Malling in 1930 to continue his research. Around 1940 he carried out experiments on the post-harvest treatment and storage of apples, from which storage under a controlled atmosphere ( CA storage ) developed.

After the Second World War

By the 1950s, the site had expanded to 500 acres, including the 200 acres of the Bradbourne Estate, which the institute bought in 1938. At that time there were 110 employees in eight departments in the institute. They carried out both breeding experiments and basic research on the physiology of plants. East Malling had expanded its research beyond apples and also dealt intensively with raspberries, for example. At that time, the East Malling Research Station was organizationally independent, financed primarily by the British state, and worked closely with the University of London .

In the 1960s, a so-called root laboratory was built - a glass-clad tunnel in which researchers and visitors could observe the roots of various trees from below. The root laboratory became the model for various other such facilities in the United States. In East Malling, however, it fell into disrepair after the cuts and restrictions that had hit the institute since 1989.

Variety breeding

  • Pear 'Concorde'

  • Apple 'Fiesta'

  • Apple 'Suntan'

  • Column apple 'Waltz'

The breeding of new apple varieties that could be used directly in commercial cultivation has intensified since the 1980s. From the Second World War until the 2000s, the varieties ' Fiesta ', ' Falstaff ', ' Sunrise ', ' Suntan ', ' Meridian ' and ' Saturn ', the cooking apple ' Charlotte ' and the cider apple ' Angela ' were produced in East Malling . The pear variety Concorde and the cherry rootstock 'Colt', which is distributed around the world, come from East Malling . The first edible apple varieties from ballerina and column trees also come from East Malling. The breeder Ken Tobutt has been breeding edible varieties such as ' Maypole ', ' Bolero ', ' Waltz ' and ' Polka ' on columnar trees that originally came from Canada since 1990 . 11 raspberry, 7 gooseberry and 32 strawberry varieties that have been launched on the market come from East Malling.

Restructuring and cuts since 1982

The restructuring of state institutions under Margaret Thatcher cuts and Umstruktierungen began at the Institute since 1982. In 1989 put the UK's Institute in East Malling, the Vegetable Research (outdoors) in Wellesbourne and the vegetable and mushroom research (under glass) in Littlehampton to a Organization together. This was first called the Institute of Horticultural Research and later Horticultural Research International . In the course of the merger, East Malling had to hand over the basic research to other institutes, but was assigned the applied strawberry cultivation. Since 1995 the institute in Littlehampton has been completely dissolved.

Institutions that were withdrawn from East Malling were, for example, the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau (after Wallingford ) or hop research (1998 to the - now closed - Wye College). Researchers from various discontinued areas of research - including plant tissue, various chemical receptors and photosynthesis - moved to universities and institutes throughout the Commonwealth from Greenwich to Zimbabwe and New Zealand.

Since 2005

East Malling has been independent again since 2005. Since 2011 the institute has had "Associate Status" at the University of Reading , which means that Reading students can work in East Malling and the institute shares the Reading library.

In recent years, East Malling has hardly received any state subsidies, so that British fruit research has little international presence. As a result, the annual reports from East Malling are difficult to come by, even for German researchers. In East Malling itself, in addition to the ongoing research, there is also a seminar house, a restaurant and a small commercial fruit orchard for direct marketing.

The site is still 202 hectares (approximately 500 acres) in size. Parts of the land have now been leased to tree nurseries, who practice normal commercial breeding there. The Hatton Garden also belongs directly to East Malling - a show garden in which many different fruit underlays are planted.

investment

After multiple restructuring, privatization and downsizing, many of the original buildings are no longer owned by the institute or are completely rented out to external companies. The stables from 1914, which initially housed the stable, then the library and the offices of the Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau , are now fully rented to external parties.

The research station includes Bradford House , an 18th century mansion that the Institute acquired from the Bradford Estate in 1938 along with 200 acres of land. This is partly also rented to external companies, partly converted into a conference center, but the East Malling Trust is also based there.

The site has a central building complex, which again includes a CA warehouse (from 1992), a building for organic fruit growing (from 2001) and a library (from 2001). The library had to move several times: from its original location in the stable building via an office container on the premises to (since 2001) in the new central complex.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ FR Tubbs: East Malling Research Station in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 139, No. 894 (Dec. 31, 1951), p. 1
  2. ^ A b c d F. R. Tubbs: East Malling Research Station in: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 139, No. 894 (Dec. 31, 1951), p. 2
  3. ^ A b c The East Malling Trust: History
  4. ^ FR Tubbs: East Malling Research Station. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 139, No. 894 (December 31, 1951), p. 4.
  5. ↑ a b c d e Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Growing, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, Abstract
  6. ↑ a b c Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 6th
  7. ^ FR Tubbs: East Malling Research Station. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 139, No. 894 (December 31, 1951), p. 3.
  8. ↑ a b Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research). In: Commercial fruit growing. March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 5.
  9. ↑ Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 7
  10. ↑ Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 8
  11. ↑ Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 2
  12. ↑ The Apple Man: Last Saturday The English Apple Man joined more than 600 visitors to The East Malling Research Public Open Day ( Memento of the original from December 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.theenglishappleman.com
  13. ↑ a b c Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 4th
  14. ↑ > Michael Blanke: 100 Years of East Malling: From Wye College Fruit Experimental Station via IHR / HRI (Horticultural Research International) to EMR (East Malling Research) , Commercial Fruit Cultivation, March 2013, Volume 55, Issue 1, p. 3

literature

Coordinates: 51 ° 17 ′ 24 ″  N , 0 ° 26 ′ 51 ″  E