Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station - Timeline of Significant Events

Timeline of Significant Events

1875: The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station is established; the first in the United States, and precursor for the nation’s industrial research laboratories; founded twenty-five years prior to the General Electric laboratories, which was the first of its kind.

1882: The Station moves to its current location on Huntington Street in New Haven, land purchased from the Eli Whitney, Jr. family

1890: Dr. Roland Thaxter, botanist at the Station, determines the cause of potato scab (an actinomycete that infects tubers).

1900: Sumatran tobacco was planted under cloth canopies in Connecticut in an effort to simulate Sumatra’s tropical climate. The resulting shade grown tobacco was considered second to none for making cigar wrappers and consequently revolutionized the industry in the Connecticut Valley.

1903: State entomologist William E. Britton and G. P. Clinton issue the first pesticide “spray calendar” to be used by Connecticut farmers.

1905: The first gypsy moth discovered in Connecticut was found in Stonington, CT by E. Frensch of Mystic, CT. A female specimen, collected on July 25, was given to W. E. Britton and is still present in the Station’s insect collection.

1907: Chestnut blight first seen in Connecticut.

1913: Thomas B. Osborne, chemist at the Station, and Lafayette B. Mendel of Yale University demonstrate with rat feeding studies that animals require twenty essential amino acids in their diet, and identify a “yellow substance” in butterfat vital for animal growth, which turned out to be Vitamin A

1917: The first hybrid corn using a four-way cross made by geneticist Donald F. Jones. He also publishes the theory of “heterosis” to explain hybrid vigor in corn.

1919: Jones invents a double cross pollination method, which allows for commercial production of hybrid corn.

1921: The Valley Laboratory established in Windsor, CT (called Tobacco Substation at the time).

1933: Dutch elm disease was found in extreme southwestern Connecticut.

1938: First report of X-disease of peach in the U.S. by E. M. Stoddard

1942: Dr. M. F. Morgan, developer of the Morgan method of soil testing and Chief of the Soils Department, was killed in action in the Philippines during World War II.

1949: A. E. Dimond developed an injectable chemotherapy to treat Dutch elm disease.

1960: R.C. Wallis of the Station and collaborators isolated a virus that causes encephalitis from Aedes vexans, mosquitoes found in Connecticut.

1969: EPIDEM, the first computer simulation for development of a disease epidemic, was developed by P. E. Waggoner and J. G. Horsfall for early blight on tomato and potato.

1975: Biological control of chestnut blight was demonstrated using hypovirulence, which was associated with dsRNA transmitted by hyphal anastomosis.

1983: John F. Anderson, Louis A. Magnarelli (Station Director and Deputy Director, respectively, at the time) along with colleagues from Yale University and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are able to isolated the causative agent of Lyme disease (the spirochete Borrelia burdorferi) from Ixodes ticks, a raccoon, and a white-footed mouse.

1989: T.G. Andreadis and R. M. Weseloh discover the fungus that caused the collapse of gypsy moth populations.

1994: S. L. Anagnostakis is given the first permit to release a genetically recombinant biocontrol agent into a Connecticut forest in an attempt to control chestnut blight disease.

1995: Magnarelli, Anderson and collaborators from Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Minnesota demonstrated that patients with Lyme disease also had antibodies to organisms that cause babesiosis and ehrlichiosis; Magnarelli, K.C. Stafford and scientists from the Johns Hopkins University and University of Rhode Island detected the DNA of the human granulocytic ehrlichiosis agent in ticks.

2005: The Department of Analytical Chemistry was selected through a competitive process as one of eight state laboratories across the country to receive funding from the United States Food and Drug Administration as a participant in the FERN (Food Emergency Response Network).

2009: The Center for Vector Biology and Zoonotic Diseases is established at the Station. This joint venture between the Entomology and Environmental Sciences Departments aims to better understand the biology of arthropod-borne diseases and the organisms that transmit them.

2010: New methods developed to test seafood from the Gulf of Mexico for contamination with petroleum-related chemicals.