Absence of funds is serious threat to research base

摘要

The recent search for a new pathologist has brought home to me just how rundown applied arable science has become in the UK. A research institute that I am involved with set out to recruit a new pathologist due to retirement and whichever lead we followed, we ultimately found out there was seemingly no applied pathologists to be found. Hopefully, we will be found wrong on this one. The trend started with the cutbacks in agricultural research implemented by the government in the mid 1980s, and has continued ever since. Successive governments, keen to keep the spending down, followed suit, were unwilling to listento the voices that told them of the dangers of following such a policy.