The Journal made its first appearance in 1911 as a modest ‘Year Book’ in a yellow wrapper. The journal took its present form only during the year 1913. Mr. T.V. Narayana Rao and Mr. Ramasamy Sivan were the two stalwart’s who worked day and night to reformat the “Agriculture Year Book” into a Journal.

Till November 1914, the journal was issued as a Quarterly. Since 1915, the Journal was published as a non-stop Monthly output depicting the various aspects of life styles, agriculture, social events, student events, etc. Referring to the periodical changes in the format of the Journal, the then Editor, Mr. C. Narayana Ayyar stated in 1917, that “There are intend rapid changes but we live in rapidly changing times”. Currently the Journal is published as a quarterly.

Originally until 1923, the publication was called as “The Journal of the ‘Madras Agricultural Students Union’.

In 1924, it was renamed as “The Madras Agricultural Journal”. In the same year the issues received the ISSN No. 0024-9602 as the first Agricultural Journal in India to get the ISSN Number.

On account of its appearance, the Journal changed from demy size of 1920-40, to half A3 size between 1940 and 1990 and from 2008 onwards it is published in A4 size.

Land Mark Event: 50th Year of MASU:

MASU, as a Union of learned men, enjoyed a special reputation among the elite of Tamil Nadu. Infact the “Golden Jubilee Year of the MAJ in 1961” was celebrated by publishing a excellent compendium “Advances in Agricultural Sciences” contained articles contributed stalwarts like B.P Pal, DG, ICAR, K. Ramiah, Father of Rice Breeding, M. S. Swaminathan (Father of Green Revolution), Y.B. Morachan, B. Ramamoorthy (Soil Physicist), M.S. Randhawa, K. Ramakrishnan (Pathologist), and many more dignitaries.

The Land Mark event was attended by none other than the Chief Minister Mr. M. Bhaktavatsalam, the then Union Agriculture Ministers, Mr. C. Subramanian, and the then Vice-President of ICAR, Mr. V. Shankar.

In 2005, MAJ Editorial Board and the TNAU Library collaborated and documented the issues from 1928 to 2005 and made it available as soft copy in PDF format. Now it is updated to 2012.

Since 2006, the contents of MAJ from 1981, to till date are available in the Google website

In the year 2008, the MAJ joined the ‘Directory of Open Access’ Journals, Lund, Germany.

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A new Logo for MASU was instituted in 2009 depicting the contributions of all the faculties including Agriculture, Horticulture, Agricultural Engineering, Forestry and Home Science.