About

Founded in 1919, NIAB is one of Britain’s oldest agricultural science research centres. It was founded as a charitable trust, to promote the improvement of British crops.

The original aims within the Trust are as relevant today as they were in 1919:

• Promote the improvement of existing varieties of seeds, plants and crops in the UK.
• Promote the improvement of methods of husbandry for the benefits of agriculture and horticulture.
• Encourage the discovery of, investigating, and making known the nature and merits of treatments, inventions, improvements and processes which may benefit the industry.

Today, NIAB is at the forefront of the application of genetics, physiology, soil science, precision agronomy and data science to improve the yield, efficiency and resilience of crop production across the arable, forage and horticulture sectors. 

NIAB has over 400 staff, with over 150 working out of Cambridge. The acquisition of The Arable Group in 2009, the University of Cambridge Potato Agronomy Unit in 2014, East Malling Research in 2016 and BCPC in 2019 has broadened the range of crop expertise that now resides within the organisation.

NIAB has established points of differentiation from other research organisations:

• Breadth of translational research activity, from prebreeding to applied agronomy.
• Productive partnerships with the science base and agri-food chain.
• Very significant farmer and industry membership base.
• UK’s largest independent trialling capability.
• Cambridge location at the intersection for UK agri-tech.
• Unique, internationally recognised expertise.

Given this longstanding, stellar reputation, examples of NIAB’s impact on 100 years of UK and global agriculture and plant science include:

• The development of seed testing and certification.
• The development of variety evaluation.
• Accelerating genetic advances in plant breeding.
• The adoption and advancement of modern field trialling techniques.
• Fighting the impact of yellow rust.