DAIRY RESEARCH WORK TO START AT NEW COLLEGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18144, 2 May 1927, Page 8

DAIRY RESEARCH WORK TO START AT NEW COLLEGE.

(Special to the ‘‘Star. ) WELLINGTON, April 30. The Dairy ISxport Control Board's decision to provide half the necessary finance will enable a prompt start to be made with a National Dairv Re search laboratory, ultimately to be part of the establishment which will develop into the New Zealand College of Agriculture neaiV Palmerston North. The site of the proposed college cannot be taken over until June 1, but the plans for dairy research are so far advanced that immediately a portion of the research staff can be appointed the work will commence at the existing laboratories in llawcra and Hamilton. The co-operation of the principal interests under the co-ordinating influence of the New Zealand Research Council has enabled an attractive and well-financed scheme to be evolved. Those interested directly in the work are the Dairy Export Control Board, the Department of Agriculture (which has hitherto done what research work has been possible without special organisation), the Agricultural College Council, and the Scientific Research Council. To enable all these interests to effectively co-operate, farm, factory, regulatory, research and educational activities are represented on the special committee constituted to control the National Dairy Research laboratory. The plan of organisation adopted at a joint conference of all the interests concerned provides for the Department of Agriculture having a laboratory in close association with the research laboratory, which will be erected as soon as possible on the Agricultural College site. There will also be a dairv factory at the College, staffed by fulltime research workers, unrlcr the management committee controlling research

work. Students at the College with a particular aptitude for dairy work may be drafted as research students in the laboratory, thus maintaining a close association with the Agricultural College. It is intended to conduct the dairy factory on such lines that it will serve all the purposes of the factory originally proposed by the Dairy Division to be placed at Wallaceville. There will be the closest co-operation l«tween the research workers and the officers of the Dairy Division, who have to conduct a good deal of routine laboratory work not involving research, but their problems would naturally come to the new laboratory for attention. Already over thirty important points for research, * directly affecting the dairy industry. / have been scheduled for consideration. The suggested staff for the first year of operation is a director, who would be either the Professor of Dairying, or chief of one of the sections of the research labtoratory: a bacteriologist and assistant bacteriologist: chemist and assistant; ami factory staff specialists. Salaries, apparatus and working expenses are expected to require nearly £OOOO during a normal working year, and this sum is assured. The capital expenditure on buildings anti equipment is placed at £2500