William B. Bryan
Professor
Division of Plant & Soil Sciences
1084 Ag. Sci. Bldg.
West Virginia University
P.O. Box 6108
Morgantown, WV 26506-6108
Office Phone: 293-6023 xt. 4318
E-mail: William.Bryan@mail.wvu.edu
Educational Background and Research Interests:
My research interests have developed starting from my early years. Growing up on a farm in Ireland I worked with dairy cattle, pigs, poultry, sugar beets, barley and grassland. My father practiced rotational grazing with cattle, followed by sows, followed by horses. He used electric fences in the early 1950’s. He practiced a 7-year crop rotation. From an early age I was determined to work in agriculture. I completed the BS in General Agriculture at University College, Dublin with first class honors and was offered a scholarship to pursue the MS. This I completed in 1965 in Animal Husbandry and in 1969 graduated from Iowa State University with the PhD in Agronomy and Animal Science. I then worked for 6 years as pasture livestock specialist in the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela. Re-assigned to Galicia, I worked with the World Bank as Regional Research Coordinator, developing a new pasture livestock research center in NW Spain. In 1977 I came to WVU as part of the new forage livestock research team.
My research is primarily in two on-going projects at WVU. One of these has the goal of producing beef from grass in Appalachia. The second investigates methods of crop livestock production under organic management. Both unify my lifelong love of farming and my goal of assisting farmers with their livelihood while maintaining or improving their soil, plant and animal resources.