Since its founding in 1875, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has earned a reputation as a leader in variety of fields that intersect with insect science, and today it is a go-to source on tick- and mosquito-borne disease research. (Photo by Scott Williams, Ph.D., Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

By Ed Ricciuti

Ed Ricciuti

More often than not, the idiom “one of a kind” is a stretch. It’s the real deal, however, for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, headquartered at a National Landmark campus, in New Haven, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.

Not only is Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) the nation’s first state agricultural experiment station by a dozen years, but unlike those in other states it is a standalone state agency, not folded into a land grant university. It was modeled in the 19th century on a then-novel German concept of agricultural research supported by public funds and staffed by scientists unburdened by the teaching burden of academia.

“Our scientists don’t have classes to teach,” says the station’s director, Jason White, Ph.D. Free from teaching, CAES’s 45 scientists—and about same number of support staff—can serve as a rapid response team when an immediate need for research emerges.

“We did it with ticks,” says White, referring how CAES got a jump on the search for the vector of Lyme disease almost as soon as it was identified in the 1970s. With scientists from Yale, they tracked it to the blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis), enabling public health authorities to more precisely focus on protecting the public and controlling the spread of disease.

Since its founding in 1875, the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station has earned a reputation as a leader in variety of fields that intersect with insect science, and today it is a go-to source on tick- and mosquito-borne disease research. It is the nation’s first state agricultural experiment station and is a standalone agency, modeled in the 19th century on a then-novel German concept of agricultural research supported by public funds and staffed by scientists unburdened by the teaching burden of academia. Shown here are the CAES main office building (right), library (middle), and plant breeding building (left) circa 1925. (Photo courtesy of Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

CAES research on Lyme disease, which has gained it increasing national and even international recognition, reflects another quality that makes it unique. Research at CAES goes well beyond the realm of agriculture, while other experiment stations, created under the federal Hatch Act of 1887, work almost exclusively on improving food production and agribusiness. In addition to CAES, Connecticut has a Hatch Act experiment station at the University of Connecticut.

Research at CAES is evenly divided among agriculture, food safety, public health, and the environment, according to White. Besides its headquarters and main laboratory, a former estate at 123 Huntington Street in New Haven, it has a farm that serves as a field laboratory in Hamden and agricultural laboratories in Windsor and Griswold.

The station has become a powerful presence in the public health field. It has earned a reputation as the go-to place for research on the ecology of headline-grabbing arthropod-borne illnesses. From the get-go, CAES was involved with Lyme disease research and is arguably the go-to institution for information on the ecology of ticks that carry the Lyme disease bacteria, as well as others that vector serious ills.

Ongoing research on tick ecology enabled CAES scientists to pinpoint hotspots of backyard blacklegged tick habitat at the yard-woodland interface more precisely than ever. They found that tick densities were greatest in forested areas closest to lawn edges with leaf litter or understory vegetation, as well as short lawns adjacent to woodland edges,

Finding new ways to reduce tick numbers has been another line of research at the station. One study showed that a single late-fall pesticide treatment works as well as conventional spraying in spring and then again in fall.

CAES postdoctoral scientist Jessica Brown, Ph.D., broadcasts an experimental fall application of synthetic acaricide to determine effectiveness against emerging spring Ixodes scapularis nymphs while limiting exposure to dormant, subterranean, or already migrated beneficial insects. (Photo by Natalie Bailey, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

CAES postdoctoral scientist Jessica Brown, Ph.D., converses with a member of the public to explain tick ecology research at the Agricultural Experiment Station’s Annual Plant Science Day at Lockwood Farm in Hamden, Connecticut. (Photo by Natalie Bailey, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

CAES scientists also were instrumental in developing an antibody test for Lyme disease in 1984 and a more reliable test for another tick-borne disease, ehrlichiosis, in 1999. That same year, scientists at CAES were the first to culture and characterize the West Nile virus from mosquitoes collected in North America and identify the American robin as an important host.

On the agricultural front, CAES research is also cutting edge. Take ongoing research there into small contaminants called engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) from manufacturing that impact the environment, for example. Sized between one and 100 nanometers—a sheet of paper is 100,000 nanometers thick—ENMs such as titanium oxide or zinc oxide are employed in electronics, pharmaceuticals and medicine, often as sensors and transducers.

CAES has investigated using many nanoparticles to protect crops and organisms in soils that support them. Nano-scale chemistry could incorporate into plants tiny particles of substances that improve nutrition and yield and suppress diseases. Pesticides, for example, could be delivered to plants at nano-scale, reducing exposure to the surrounding environment.

Although CAES science has been more in the limelight in recent years, breakthrough scientific discoveries are sprinkled throughout its history. Early in the last century, CAES birthed the commercial production of hybrid corn, which today constitutes almost the nation’s entire crop.

CAES is experimenting with host-targeted tick treatments including the oral-delivery of systemic acaricides to small rodents. Here, postdoctoral scientist Jessica Brown, Ph.D. (front), positions a trail camera over a bait box as technician Jamie Cantoni flags its location and seasonal employee Carlin Eswarakumar looks on. (Photo by Natalie Bailey, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

CAES postdoctoral scientist Jessica Brown, Ph.D. (right), and CAES seasonal employee Carlin Eswarakumar (foreground) work with Yale University ecology and evolutionary biology Ph.D. student Isaac Osew (back left) set up a rodent processing station for exploratory tick ecology sampling on Yale’s Peabody Museum-owned Horse Island in Branford, Connecticut’s Thimble Islands Archipelago. (Photo by Natalie Bailey, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station)

Scientists at CAES and nearby Yale discovered Vitamin A in 1913, at the same time that researchers at the University of Wisconsin did as well.

The seed that grew into the nation’s first agricultural experiment station was planted when Yale chemistry professor Samuel Johnson observed the system in Germany. A follow-up trip to examine agricultural research in Germany was taken by one of Johnson’s students, William O. Attwater, who became a chemistry professor at Wesleyan University.

Together, they convinced state lawmakers to appropriate $2,400 to cover an experiment station for two years. Meanwhile, Attwater pulled an end run on his former teacher. A wealthy friend of Johnson promised legislators he would contribute $1,000 to the funding if they housed the station at Wesleyan, with Attwater as director, rather than at Johnson’s Yale.

The station operated out of Wesleyan for only two years until Johnson politicked and had it moved to Yale. In 1881, the state bought its present headquarters and it moved there.

Today, CAES operates on an annual budget of about $16 million. Half comes from the general fund. A quarter comes from the federal Farm Bill, a renewable package of legislation supporting farmers and the nation’s food supply. A quarter depends on competitive research grants. So far, federal spending cuts have not impacted CAES, says White.

CAES celebrated its 150th anniversary year with a dinner at the New Haven Lawn Club in September 2025. Reflecting on the institution’s last century and a half, White says, “Our commitment to public service remains the foundation of everything we do, exemplified by our mission to put science to work for society.”

Ed Ricciuti is a journalist, author, and naturalist who has been writing for more than a half century. His most recent book is called Bears in the Backyard: Big Animals, Sprawling Suburbs, and the New Urban Jungle (Countryman Press, June 2014). His assignments have taken him around the world. He specializes in nature, science, conservation issues, and law enforcement. A former curator at the New York Zoological Society, and now at the Wildlife Conservation Society, he may be the only man ever bitten by a coatimundi on Manhattan’s 57th Street.