A methodology to determine the extent of multi-disciplinary research has been described. The extent of multi-disciplinary research in agriculture is measured by noting the percentage of research articles covering one or more disciplines, in ten journals of agricultural research. Currently 28.4 per cent of the articles appearing in these journals are observed to be multi-disciplinary. The growth in multi-disciplinary research is estimated at 2.6 per cent per annum. The extent of multi-disciplinary research is the highest in plant physiology (73.1 per cent), followed by agronomy including fertilizers (51.2 per cent). The order of decreasing extent of multi-disciplinary research of the other sciences is plant breeding, soils, plant pathology and entomology. In comparison with the applied agricultural sciences, the extent of multi-disciplinary research is much less in the fundamental science of genetics.