New York State Agricultural Experiment Station

In its early days, Station scientists, who were few in number, concentrated their efforts on dairy, horticulture, and evaluation of varieties of vegetables and field crops.

During this period, the station also began playing its continuing active role in the state's agricultural law enforcement program.

[citation needed] Still later, research activities were added in the fields of bacteriology, dairy science, fruit horticulture, chemistry, plant pathology, and insect and mite species.

Since then, it has been the center for research in New York on the production, protection, and utilization of fruit and vegetable crops, an industry that is today valued in excess of $2 billion.

[3] New York State funded a $6.7 million construction project to renovate the Food Science Laboratory in 2007, with work completed by 2009.

The publications began with the two-volume Apples of New York, a 1905 report written by Station horticulturalist Spencer Ambrose Beach.

The series was continued by Ulysses Prentiss Hedrick, who released six volumes on grapes, plums, cherries, peaches, pears and small fruits over a period of eighteen years.

A circular released July 1932 to commemorate Station's fiftieth year noted the "exhaustive monographs on the hardy fruits" and stated that the texts were, by that time, "accepted universally as standard treatises on the subject."

[8] As the station's research program has matured and expanded, the financial support base has been increasingly augmented by funds from foundations, industry, grower and food processor organizations, and by individuals.