Catalogue description Department of Scientific and Industrial Research: Pest Infestation Research Committees

Research into infestation of stored products was initiated by Professor J W Munro of the Imperial College of Science and Technology in 1927. The following year the college set up a field station at Slough for studies of control of pests in stores. By the late 1930s the successes achieved there had convinced leaders of the grain trade that more extensive research should be undertaken. Late in 1937 Mr W A McAuley Gracie of the London and North Eastern Railway set up an informal committee of industrial interests suffering from infestation of stored grain products to consider the problems. Following a request from this committee for governmental assistance, the DSIR agreed to sponsor, with financial support from industry, a survey of infestation in the United Kingdom. Munro agreed to organise the survey, which began in May 1938, and a Grain Infestation Survey Committee was set up by the department to act in an advisory capacity. To maintain close relations with industry a Standing Conference on the Infestation of Grain by Insects (later called the Standing Conference on Pest Infestation of Produce) was established at the same time.

The standing conference and the Food (Defence Plans) Department of the Board of Trade represented to the department that a permanent scientific organisation was necessary to deal with problems of pest infestation research and to advise industry and government. It was decided that a Pest Infestation Research Organisation should be established. In February 1939 a Pest Infestation Research Committee was set up to act as an advisory body to the department in pest infestation research and with a view to replacing the survey committee which, after presenting its final report in March 1940, was discharged. The department then established, in April 1940, a Pest Infestation Laboratory at the Imperial College field station, taking over some of its staff. During the war advice from the laboratory was largely channelled through the Insect Infestation Division of the Ministry of Food, which subsequently developed into the Infestation Control Laboratory of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, conducting research on the biology and control of vertebrate pests.

The Pest Infestation Laboratory investigated the attack by insects, mites and fungi upon stored products of animal and vegetable origin, especially cereals, and devised methods of preventing such attack. In 1947 the organisation was upgraded to a directorate, and as a result the research committee was renamed the Pest Infestation Research Board, its duties being to advise generally on the research to be undertaken by the organisation and on the conduct of approved investigations, to submit annually a programme of research and a report.

From 1950, when a colonial liaison officer was appointed, the laboratory provided much advice for exporting countries, particularly in Africa, and in 1962 the Department of Technical Co-operation paid for increased accommodation for the laboratory's Tropical Liaison Department. In 1964 the Ministry of Overseas Development took over responsibility for that department, which became the Tropical Stored Products Centre and in 1967 was taken over by the Tropical Products Institute.

In July 1959 the board and the laboratory were transferred to the Agricultural Research Council. In 1970 the laboratory was transferred to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, where it was amalgamated with the Infestation Control Laboratory, previously the main user of its research work, to form the Pest Infestation Control Laboratory.