Historical Note

The Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station was established in 1886 by an act of the Virginia General Assembly and funded by the federal Hatch Act of 1887 for the purpose of providing practical and useful information on agricultural and scientific subjects. Originally, it was organized into three departments: agriculture, botany and entomology, and chemistry. VAES was responsible for several agricultural research stations and laboratories throughout Virginia. On 1 July 1966, the research activities of the Agricultural Experiment Station, as well as the Engineering Experiment Station, were combined under a University-wide Research Division.