The Morrow Plots on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus mark 150 years in production this year — the nation’s oldest continuously running agricultural experiment in North America. The plots are the second oldest in the world.
“It’s not an overstatement to say that the Morrow Plots have directly impacted the way Americans farm,” according to a news release from the University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.
“When the plots were established, farming was more of an art than a science. However, methodical, controlled experiments in the plots proved certain practices — crop rotation and judicious fertilizer use — were winners from boosting crop yield, soil health and farm profitability.”
The university said the Morrow Plots likely started with agriculture chemist Charles Wallace Silver, who visited England’s Rothamsted Field, the world’s oldest agricultural experiment field, and later proposed a long-term corn study on campus in 1875.
At that time scientists debated whether Midwest soils required fertilizer at all. Some believed crop rotation alone could release sufficient nutrients, which set the stage for the long-term experiments that followed.
Manly Miles, hired as a professor in 1875, proposed experimental plots to the university’s leadership. When his tenure ended stewardship of the research was passed to George Espy Morrow. Morrow was the first to publish findings in 1888.
When the plots were established in 1876, the experiment included 10 half-acre fields designed to test how cropping systems affect soil productivity over time.
The earliest study, known as the Experiment 23 Rotation Study, documented cropping systems maintained for 14 years without fertilizer or manure.
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