On December the 1st in 1955, through a signed agreement between the Minister of Agriculture and Industries, the Technical Inter American Service of Agriculture Cooperation (STICA), and the University of Costa Rica, was founded the Agronomy Research’s Lab with the initial purpose of conducting agronomy research on crops such as coffee and cocoa, and to venture later on other fields.
It was assigned an executive committee to advise and coordinate the labors in technical aspects of the own objectives of the laboratory, including an adequate relation among the field research and the lab, and the accomplishment of research done by the students of the Agri-food School to their thesis and the extension as an informative complement of the results.
From laboratory to research centre
- 1955
The Agronomic Research Laboratory is founded under an agreement between the Ministry of Agriculture and Industry, STICA and the University of Costa Rica.
- 1960
The laboratory becomes part of the Faculty of Agrifood Sciences and its role as a service laboratory ends.
- 1972
Under the new regulation of the School of Agronomy, the unit is renamed the Agronomic Research Center (CIA).
- 1992
The CIA is attached to the Institute of Agricultural Research, which reports to the Faculty of Agrifood Sciences. Its objective is to contribute to the integral development of the country.
The Center today
Nowadays, the center depends on a scientific council that coordinates and trains specific technical aspects and involves adequately lab activities, greenhouse and field. This labor is made through the contest of technicians, students, and farmers both national and international. His area of substantive work is oriented to the research in four defined areas to know: 1) biotechnology of the plants; 2) postharvest technology; 3) soils (that include biochemistry, agricultural microbiology, fertility, soils, and tissue analysis; 4) natural sources. By its nature and inside the institutional task, it also makes a teaching and social labor.
Services provided by the Center
Among some of the services that it provides, there are:
- To advice in the treatment or transformation of organic waste, natural and synthetic, with the purpose of finding an utility for the society and avoiding the contamination at the same time.
- To produce seed material of high quality.
- To obtain and multiply plants free of pathogens (mushrooms, bacteria, virus)
- To multiply fast and locally new crops or elite materials.
- To rescue embryos for obtaining new hybrids.
- To select tolerant plants to pests and illnesses of high production.
- To evaluate, through a physicochemical analyses, the current fertility status, and the potential of the soils in Costa Rica.
- To evaluate the status of mineral nutrition of the main crops in Costa Rica though plant absorption curves, and performance variables.
- To establish the methodology to tune the recommendations of the fertilization of the main crops in Costa Rica.
- Microbiologic analyses of soils, water and plants.
- Production of inoculants.
- Services of postharvest technology of fresh products in five areas: postharvest physiology, postharvest pathology, postharvest engineering, postharvest horticulture, and general training.
- To coordinate with international institutions the inclusion of geographic information generated over the country in regional programs.
- To train to undergraduate and graduate students in the usage of modern computational systems for managing geographic information.
Academic output
In a period from 2 to 10 years the CIA researchers have produced a total of 129 articles in national magazines, 41 articles in international magazines. Moreover, they have participated in 449 national conferences or symposiums and in 78 international events. They also have participated in other activities such as meetings to coordinate activities, edit booklets, and elaborate chapter of books, etc. in 152 times.
