Anti-Locust Research Centre

The Colonial Office of the UK government set up the Anti-Locust Research Centre as an independent research institute in 1945 because of the threat from locusts to overseas agriculture. Sir Boris Uvarov (1889-1970) was appointed as its first director. Uvarov pioneered modern locust studies and proposed the phase theory of locusts to explain the origin and disappearance of locust plagues. Formerly, Uvarov was head of a small locust research unit at the Imperial Institute of Entomology in London. International collaborations were successfully achieved through this unit's work and were then formalised at a series of international anti-locust conferences organised during the 1930's. It was these conferences that ultimately led to the formation of the Anti-Locust Research Centre (ALRC).

The ALRC's primary aims were the coordination on international research in acridology and international cooperation in locust control. From 1945 to 1970 the scientists at ALRC made great advances in operational tactics, application methods, survey techniques and locust biology, within the objectives of improved forecasting of locust activity and the effective control of this important migrant pest. Originally the ALRC was based at the Natural History Museum in South Kensington , before subsequent moves elsewhere in London.

The ALRC's remit was broadened to include more general aspects of both plant and animal protection, and pest management. With this expanded remit it became the Centre for Overseas Pest Research (COPR) in 1971. In 1983 COPR was amalgamated with the Tropical Products Institute (TPI, founded in 1958) to form the Tropical Development and Research Institute (TDRI), which was managed by the Overseas Development Administration of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 1988 TDRI was relocated to Chatham, where it merged with the Land Resources Development Centre (LDRC, founded in 1964) to form the Overseas Development Natural Resources Institute (ODNRI). The ODNRI became simply the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) in 1990. The NRI was transferred to the Univeristy of Greenwich in 1996.

Acridology is no longer a central focus of the NRI's work and now primary operational and survey responsibilities for coordinating locust forecasting and control have been transferred to the Locusts and Other Migratory Pests Group (which includes the Desert Locust Information Service, DLIS) of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), based in Rome.