The first Director of ABRO was Professor R. G. White who held the post from 1945 to 1950 and afterwards held a consultancy post there until 1958. He had a special interest in farms and their management.  In 1943, when the Agricultural Research Council was considering the future of animal breeding research, Professor White, with his background in farm management and animal breeding, was asked to be the first director of NABGRO (later ABRO)in 1945. The organisation’s first project was the establishment of the Pig Station at Mountmarle and the Field Laboratory at Dryden.  Another project that Professor White was involved in at ABRO was to develop the farm at Aber which had both arable and ‘mountain’ land conditions. With his interest in animal breeding, Professor White used the Aber farm to breed a highly improved version of Welsh Mountain sheep that produced better wool and carcass traits. Additionally, this farm was used to improve the quality of ‘hill land’. According to his obituary written by H. P. Donald in the ABRO Annual Report from 1977, Professor White was interested in ‘the basic principle of matching the genotype to the environment…’.