International Institute of Tropical Agriculture's (IITA) original mandate was formulated by the institute's management and Board of Trustees on the basis of a 1967 document, which stated that research should focus primarily on problems of improving food crop production in the humid tropics and on the soil and crop management requirements for developing a stable, permanent agriculture in which food crops occupy a central position. Research on soils and land use was organised as a separate program, called the Farming Systems Program (FSP), whose operational objective was stated as:the rapid development of permanent, productive farming systems for staple food production in the humid tropics. Three crop improvement programs, for cereals, grain legumes and root and tuber crops, were to develop suitable varieties for crops currently grown in, or with potential for, the humid zone. A trial was started in 1972 at the Ibadan station on Egbeda soil to monitor the evolution of soil properties under continuous cropping, compared with fallow.