75 Years in the service of agriculture: the Limburgerhof agricultural research station, 1914-1989

Less than a year after the synthesis of ammonia from air and water had begun on a large scale in the former "Badische Anilin und Sodafabrik" in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine, a small "Experimental Station for Fertilizer and Plant Physiological Studies" came into existence in what is at present the Limburgerhof district of the Palatinate. That was in May 1914. It was here that the nitrogen fertilizers manufactured by the new process were to undergo basic testing. The first quarter of a century, 1914-1939, was primarily concerned with the increase of yields in the hunger period following the war and with the subsequent increase in population. This was made possible by a general improvement in cultivation techniques (utilization of fallow land, planting clover, planting root crops of potatoes and beets, use of mineral fertilizers) and, above all, by the now unlimited supply of nitrogen fertilizers. The intensive studies on plant nutrition led to the setting up of the lysimeter in 1927, and to the introduction of the first multinutrient fertilizer of homogeneous composition Nitrophoska. Grassland considered to be the "future land" led to the conservation of silage with organic acids and to the introduction of Amasil, the silage additive. The breeding of silage plants suitable for intermediate cropping also helped to reduce the protein gap in the feeding of farm animals. By 1939 the Limburgerhof Agricultural Research Station, and its 21 agricultural advisory posts throughout the German Reich, had developed an extensive field trial department which was regarded as exemplary in the field of scientific studies on arable and horticultural crops. The second twenty-five year period, 1939-1964, also began with war, depression and hunger. But then, as a result of sweeping mechanisation in agriculture and the introduction of novel crop treatments (trace elements, foliar and liquid fertilizers, slow-release forms of N, bioregulators, chemical plant protection compounds) there was a rapid and considerable increase in production