CEREAL RESEARCH

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 195, 19 May 1928, Page 13

CEREAL RESEARCH

WORK AT LINCOLN COLLEGE STATEMENT .BY MINISTER By Tblegbaph.—Pbess ASSOCIATION Umaru, May 18. The Hon. O. J. Hawken, Minister Of Agriculture,, arrived K here to-day from the south. Referring to an article which had appeared in a city newspaper in regard to cereal research, the Minister said that there was not one thing correct in the article. It said that the Government, for some obscure reason, had decided to locate the cereal research station at Massey College, Palmerston North, and to transfer the Canterbury branch ■ staff to the north, two officers having, already received notice to proceed to the North Island. This was quite wrong. No instructions had been issued to any officers of the research staff to proceed to the North Island, and there was no mtention whatever of transferring cereal research work from Lincoln College to Massey College.

“This is the first I have heard of the matter,” said the Minister. ' “The cereal research work will be conducted at Lincoln College, where it should be. Such work ought to be conducted in the province where most of the cereals are grOwn, and that is what is going to happen. “Evidently,” said Mr. Hawken, “the critics are confusing cereal research With plant research. There ,is an area of 14 acres at Massey College for plant research, and I understand that the Research Department is negotiating for a much larger area of land for cereal research at Lincoln.”

The article also compared salaries at Massey College with those at Lincoln, The Minister said that he had , nothing to do with the salaries, these being in the hands of the governing Council.

Mr. Hawken added that it was a difficult task to dovetail the different duties of the various Departments and decide just what work each should do, but no good could come of unwarrantable criticism. “I fully appreciate the fact that each must do the particular work most suited to it,” he said, “and I hope that as time goes on the research stations and the Department will work together with the common aim of increasing production in New Zealand.”