Introduction

Following the lead of the Americans in the late nineteenth century, dozens of specialised public sector agricultural research institutes were set up around the world during the early years of the twentieth century. In countries like Germany and France, state-run agricultural experimental units had been established as early as the 1850s, but these were largely desultory, uncoordinated affairs in comparison with the US Land Grant and State Agricultural Experiment Stations networks. Most of the new European agricultural research centres were relatively small and tended to specialise in local crops, often under the control of a regional administration. This meant that breeders in such centres were often less aware of scientific developments in the wider world, many of which might have had useful application to their own crops. Unlike the USA, where much of the post nineteenth century agriculture was starting with a clean slate on largely virgin land with new crops, most of the farming in Europe occurred in the context of centuries of local and regional traditions that complicated broader strategic management by the nation state.

One solution that was applied in the Netherlands was to establish a single national centre of crop innovation. This Dutch initiative occurred at about the same time the US system was finally being completed in the early twentieth century.