- A simple agricultural experiment begun 161 years ago
is today yielding dramatic insights into events - such as nuclear fallout
over Britain - unimaginable when it started.
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- Jars of soil collected to measure fertiliser regimes
at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire have been used to detect
radioactive
isotopes from the Nevada desert tests of the 1950s, from the hydrogen bomb
tests at Bikini Atoll and from Chernobyl in 1986.
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- "Long-term field experiments come to be used in
ways their founders could never have predicted," Professor Keith
Goulding
of Rothamsted Research will tell the science festival. New methods enabled
researchers to identify the precise radiation "signature" of
individual explosions, he said.
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- One field at Rothamsted, Broadbalk, has been growing
wheat for 161 years and soil samples are taken annually, in what was one
of the original experiments, Prof Goulding said. "Broadbalk shows
that our agriculture is sustainable because yields keep going up."
What we are getting is more food for the same amounts of fertiliser year
after year, by better agronomy, better agricultural practice."
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- Two-thirds of all British moth species have declined
over the last 35 years, says Kelvin Conrad of the Rothamsted insect
survey.
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- Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk
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