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…’.

While the Institute of Animal Genetics originated in the early 1900s, the Agricultural Research Council formed the National Animal Breeding and Genetics Research Organisation (NABGRO) in 1945 which housed the Institute directed by Conrad Hal Waddington. In 1946, it was renamed the Animal Breeding and Genetics Research Organisation (ABGRO) and was co-directed by Waddington (animal genetics) and Hugh P. Donald (animal breeding).  Then, in 1951, Donald was appointed Director of the renamed Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO). This happened when the Agricultural Research Council decided that there was a need to fund research in the area of genetic livestock improvement and so two organisations were established at the University of Edinburgh both undertaking theoretical and experimental research in quantitative genetics relevant to livestock improvement.

ABRO’s research activities involved a combination of laboratory and field work and covered various areas from ‘breeding mice for milk production, learning by immunological and biochemical methods what “blood will tell”, and climatological studies on sheep.’ It was also very involved in researching female reproduction since that is one of the main focuses for exploitation by the livestock industry. So, a great deal of research was conducted on the ‘behaviour of mammalian eggs, on the transfer of antibodies between dam and foetus, or on birth weights and survival ‘, other aspects of maternal performance; twinning in cattle, sheep and humans, in the structure of breeding populations and in the relations between individual and progeny performance shown by a range of different animals.  In addition to their research in animal genetics and livestock improvement, the scientists at ABRO were extremely knowledgeable in various aspects of practical farming and animal breeding.

Here’s a lovely photograph from 1968 of some of the ABRO scientists with one of their sheep!  Unfortunately no one in the photograph was identified, so if anyone knows who any of them are (even the sheep), please post a reply!

One of the most interesting things I’ve found in cataloguing the off-print articles collected by the scientists at the Roslin Institute is the variety of areas in which animal genetics can be applied. It can range from animal breeding to cloning and from food production to the textile industry among other many other things. For example, Dr. Michael L. Ryder, a biologist and textile fibre consultant who worked at Animal Breeding Research Organization, Edinburgh in the 1960s and 1970s, wrote many interesting papers on sheep and the wool and textile industry from prehistoric times up to the late 20^th century. His articles, in journals ranging from Animal Production to The Journal of the Bradford Textile Society discuss findings from historical records and biological data such as techniques for identifying the animal fibres in pre-historic cloth to studies on environmental conditions on wool fleece structures.

Some particular articles of interest by Dr. Ryder are:

•  “Sheep and wool in history”, Journal of the Bradford Textile Society, 1962-1963, p. 29-43 (GB 237 Coll-1362/1/159);
• “A late Bronze Age find from Pyotdykes, Angus, Scotland, with associated gold, cloth, leather and wool remains”, Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society Vol. XXX, 1964, p. 186-198. (GB 237 Coll-1362/1/169)
• “Sheep and the Clearances in the Scottish Highlands : a biologist’s view” Agricultural History Review, British Agricultural History Society, Vol. 16, Part 2, 1968, p. 155-158. (GB 237 Coll-1362/1/284)

Once they’re made available to researchers, these articles will provide a fascinating insight on the history of woollen textiles!

Well, while that may be a question open to debate in another forum, science fiction became fact when Roslin Institute geneticists ‘dreamt’ of cloned sheep and created ‘Dolly’ in 1996. As the Rare Books Cataloguer for the Towards Dolly project, I’m  currently cataloguing and enhancing records of ‘off-prints’, or articles, that the scientists wrote and collected in bound volumes (and some loose!) from the Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO) beginning in 1947 up to the Roslin Institute in 2007 before continuing on to the book collection and glass plate slides. It’s evident from the variety of research articles in these volumes that these scientists were interested in more than just sheep! Many of these off-print article discuss ideas from breeding issues and genetic abnormalities to ways to improve the meat quality of bacon and wool growth for the textile industry. This material provides a fascinating insight into the development of genetics research over the years and I look forward to finding out how it all progresses!