An area of research excellence for the NH Agricultural Experiment Station and the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture is protected agriculture—a means by which farmers can use technologies, structures and associated management to help reduce production risks, extend growing seasons and optimize the use of inputs. Protected agriculture management has been and continues to be adopted widely around the state and region, plays an important role in ensuring resilient food production in New Hampshire, and looks to discoveries and innovations from the Station to inform best practices and responsiveness to emerging challenges.

One of the pioneers of protected agricultural research in the northeast and nationally was Dr. Otho Wells, an emeritus professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Cooperative Extension vegetable specialist, who passed away on November 21, 2023. Regrettably, I had not met Dr. Wells in my time at UNH, so I asked Dr. Becky Sideman, who is a current leader in the protect agriculture research program at UNH, to offer a bit of background and thoughts to help celebrate Dr. Wells' research and extension achievements in New Hampshire and far beyond.

Otho Wells and Brent Loy, a fellow NHAES researcher, worked together beginning in the 1970s studying agricultural plastics to protect crop plants in cool climates. Dr. Wells describes being inspired in 1977 by seeing plastic row covers used in San Diego to protect tender crops, tomato and cucumber. Wells and Loy had a long and productive collaboration in which they studied the effects of rowcovers, low tunnels, and ultimately high tunnels. They brought these technologies to New Hampshire, and then refined, enhanced, developed, and demonstrated their positive effects in New Hampshire's cool climate and short growing season.

In the early 1990s, Wells constructed eight research high tunnels at the NH Agricultural Experiment Station’s Woodman Horticultural Research Farm, in what was one of the first formal high tunnel research centers in the United States. He wrote in 2000, "…row covers had a limited amount of environmental control, while heated greenhouses were too expensive in many applications, therefore something between those two choices was needed. The answer came in the form of high tunnels." Wells' work was particularly impactful because he worked closely with farmers and innovative manufacturers throughout the region to test and develop technologies that were appropriate and useful in the region. Growers valued his work enormously; today the conference room at the Woodman Horticultural Research Farm bears his name and was renovated with donations from the NH Vegetable and Berry Growers Association.

"I am grateful for his mentorship and to be able to follow in his footsteps to try to build upon the impactful work he did," Dr. Sideman noted. "While only three of the original eight research high tunnels were still at the Woodman Farm when I arrived, high tunnels were by then an important part of the farming landscape. Nearly every commercial vegetable grower in the state had one (or several), and growers were interested in exploring new crops and better understanding how to manage these structures and the micro-environments within them."

Dr. Wells was critical to helping fulfill the impactful research mission of the NH Agricultural Experiment Station and UNH, and to establishing the foundation for protected agriculture to be one of the cornerstones of science excellence.

Happy holidays and thank you for all your continued support of the agricultural, food, forestry, and natural resources research mission of the NHAES—in the past, today and in the future.

Anton Bekkerman

Director, NH Agricultural Experiment Station

Dr. Otho Wells (left) showing off sweetpotato roots grown for Dr. Becky Sideman's original sweetpotato research in early-2010s at the Woodman Horticultural Research Farm. (Photo is courtesy of Becky Sideman).

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