Abstract
Agricultural education and research in Ethiopia began at Ambo and Jimma Institutes of Agriculture; and the Jimma Institute was later extended to College of Agriculture at Alemaya in 1957. The first university-level agricultural training program, with a 4-year curriculum leading to a Bachelor of Science degree in General Agriculture, was started in September 1953. The MSc program in Soil Science started at Haramaya University in 1998 and, currently, 16 universities in the country offer training postgraduate at MSc and PhD levels in soil science. The first small-scale agricultural experiments were initiated in 1952 by the government with the help of foreign experts. In 1956, an agricultural experiment station was established at Debrezeit. Well-organized agricultural research began with the establishment of the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR) in 1966 as a semi-autonomous institute with financial support from UNDP and FAO. In 1997, the IAR was restructured by establishing EARO, which was later rechristened to the present-day Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR). The National Soil Laboratory was established in 1967 with the assistance of UNDP/FAO. The laboratory was originally mandated to assist farmers with fertilizer application. Soil conservation research in Ethiopia began with the initiation of the Soil Conservation Research Project (SCRP) in 1981 within the framework of the then Soil and Water Conservation Department (SWCD) of the Ministry of Agriculture. The first national digital soil mapping was undertaken in 2012 by the Ethiopian Soil Information System (EthioSIS).
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Beyene, S., Regassa, A. (2023). History of Soil Education and Research. In: Beyene, S., Regassa, A., Mishra, B.B., Haile, M. (eds) The Soils of Ethiopia. World Soils Book Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17012-6_2
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