Agricultural History Review, Volume 46 Part 1 (1998), pp. 47–63

The Aberdeen Agricultural Association, later renamed the Agricultural Research Association, was established in 1875. Relying upon donations from landowners, the Association set up an experimental station and laboratory, and for a few years ran an experimental farm. From the beginning, the organization challenged the views of agricultural scientists in England. Thomas Jamieson, the Association's chemist, demonstrated that insoluble phosphate was a more useful fertiliser than had been supposed, and later claimed to have shown that green plants could fix atmospheric nitrogen. This lead to a bruising conflict with the director of Rothamsted Experimental Station. In the 1910s the Association's work ceased after it failed to secure a grant from the newly-formed Development Commission. In contrast, a joint committee of the North of Scotland College of Agriculture and Aberdeen University obtained Development Commission funds for an animal nutrition laboratory, and in 1914 appointed John Boyd On:, a Glasgow medical graduate, as research worker. Orr proved much more effective than Jamieson, both in building and using alliances with members of the agricultural science establishment in England, and in obtaining private funds, leading to the official opening of the Rowett Research Institute, of which Orr was designated director, in 1922. 

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