Bernard Coventry CIE (10 December 1859 – 26 January 1929) was a British agronomist who served as the founding director of the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, Bengal Presidency, India from 1904.
Coventry was the son of Reverend John Coventry of Burgate House, Hants, and Catherine Seton. He was educated at Beaumont College and went to work in the indigo industry in India in 1881 becoming a part owner of the Dalsing Sarai Indigo Concern in Bihar. He conducted experiments to introduce rhea ( Boehmeria nivea ) cultivation in India and calculated the profitability of processing and exporting the fibre to Europe. [1] His research was commended by Sir John Woodburn in 1902. In 1800 he was involved in research on indigo, taking out a patent for improved indigo processing. In 1898 some Bihar indigo farmers formed an Indigo Improvement Syndicate (IIS) with the aims of conducting experiments. In 1901 Bihar Indigo Planters Association (BIPA) with their chemist Christopher Rawson and the IIS combined to work on experiments on the recommendation of Sir George Watt. Coventry worked with Begg, Dunlop and Company who hired a chemist E.A. Hancock and tried testing better indigo species (including Indigofera arrecta , experiments on which were also made at Calcutta by David Prain) and varieties from around the world. After Hancock left, the station at Dalsingserai hired Hugh Martin-Leake and chemist William P. Bloxam. [2] By 1903 the BIPA stopped funding the project but IIS continued to support it and a fresh government grant was made in 1903 leading to a research station at Peeprah. Here Cyril Bergtheil was recruited. [3] The research work was highly regarded by several officials including James Mollison, Denzil Ibbetson, and David Prain. Mollison who became the first Inspector General of Agriculture recommended that the Dalsingserai team be absorbed into the first agricultural science establishment formed at Pusa. [4] Coventry was appointed principal of the Agricultural College at Pusa in 1904. The institution later became the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute. He was appointed a Companion, Order of the Indian Empire on 14 June 1912 and served as an advisor on agriculture to the government until 1916. [5]
Coventry married Ella Gordon Dalgleish on 7 January 1892 [6] at Dalsingserai and they had four daughters.
Elizabeth "Eliza" Lucas Pinckney transformed agriculture in colonial South Carolina, where she developed indigo as one of its most important cash crops. Its cultivation and processing as dye produced one-third the total value of the colony's exports before the Revolutionary War. Manager of three plantations, Pinckney had a major influence on the colonial economy.
Bihar is a state in eastern India. It is the third largest state by population, the 12th largest by area, and the 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Bengal to the east, and Jharkhand to the south. The Bihar plain is split by the river Ganges, which flows from west to east.
The University of Calcutta is a public state university located in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. It has 151 affiliated undergraduate colleges and 16 institutes in Kolkata and nearby areas. It was established on 24 January 1857 and is the oldest multidisciplinary university of Indian Subcontinent and South East Asian Region. Today, the university's jurisdiction is limited to a few districts of West Bengal, but at the time of its establishment it had a catchment area ranging from Kabul to Myanmar. Within India, it is recognized as a "Five-Star University" and accredited an "A++" grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC).
The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), commonly known as the Pusa Institute, is India's national institute for agricultural research, education and extension. The name Pusa Institute is derived from the fact that the institute was originally located in Pusa, Bihar as the Imperial Institute of Agricultural Research in 1911. It was then renamed as the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute in 1919 and following a major earthquake in Pusa in 1934, it was relocated to Delhi in 1936. The current institute in Delhi is financed and administered by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR). The IARI was responsible for the research leading to the "Green Revolution in India" of the 1970s. IARI ranked First among Agriculture and Allied Universities in the National Institutional Ranking Framework NIRF,
The Permanent Settlement, also known as the Permanent Settlement of Bengal, was an agreement between the East India Company and landlords of Bengal to fix revenues to be raised from land that had far-reaching consequences for both agricultural methods and productivity in the entire British Empire and the political realities of the Indian countryside. It was concluded in 1793 by the Company administration headed by Charles, Earl Cornwallis. It formed one part of a larger body of legislation, known as the Cornwallis Code. The Cornwallis Code of 1793 divided the East India Company's service personnel into three branches: revenue, judicial, and commercial. Revenues were collected by zamindars, native Indians who were treated as landowners. This division created an Indian landed class that supported British authority.
Sisir Kumar Mitra MBE, FNI, FASB, FIAS, FRS was an Indian physicist.
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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, formerly known as Rajendra Agricultural University, is a public central agriculture university under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare and is recognised as Institute of National Importance by government of India. It is located in Pusa, Samastipur district, Bihar.
Bhumihars, also locally called Bhuinhar and Babhan, are a Hindu caste mainly found in Bihar, the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, the Bundelkhand region of Madhya Pradesh, and Nepal.
Frederic John Mouat was a British surgeon, chemist and prison reformer. He was part of the committee that helped identify the Andaman Islands as a suitable location for a convict settlement. He examined the use of chaulmogra oil in the treatment of leprosy and published the first illustrated book on human anatomy in Urdu in 1849. He was also involved in the founding of Presidency College, Calcutta.
Zerat is a land ownership system in early colonial India. The zerat system was particularly common in Bengal and Bihar. It refers to the private land of the landlord, which would often be cultivated by peasants. Zerat was mainly responsible for a change in traditional forms of agricultural organization in some parts of India, replacing the ryot system. It produced a strain on the peasant economy, despite peasants being free to grow their own crops.
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John Augustus Voelcker CIE was an English agricultural chemist and the second son of the German-born English chemist Augustus Voelcker (1822–1884). John Augustus (Jr.) succeeded his father as consulting chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England and continued research on soil fertility. He headed a committee that examined issues in Indian agriculture in 1891.
John Walter Leather was an agricultural chemist who worked in India as the first Imperial Agricultural Chemist at the Imperial Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, Bihar. Appointed in 1892, he worked on a variety of agricultural production and chemistry related issues in India.
Cyril Jonas Bergtheil known from around 1916 as Cyril Jonas Berkeley was an English chemist, bacteriologist, and zoologist of German ancestry. He worked in India from 1902 to 1912 serving as an Imperial Bacteriologist and later collaborated with his wife Edith Berkeley in studies on polychaetes.
Hugh Martin-Leake was a British economic botanist who worked in India, primarily on the improvement of indigo and opium cultivation. He served as an economic botanist and as a director of agriculture in the United Provinces.