Tag Archives: research

Meet a Virginia Cooperative Extension Soybean Test Plot

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Cover photo credit-Lindy Tucker; above-Taylor Clarke

Instead of our usual narrative, this month we are sharing a video documenting our on-farm soybean test plots and explaining how we use these plots to generate decision-making tools for crop farmers in Virginia. As you will learn, developing test plots requires careful pre-planning and calculations, good management throughout the season, and special data collection at harvest time. This crop performance data becomes available to farmers each year, fueling agricultural progress and profitability. In the video, we explain the whole process from start to finish while tracking one of our plots which was planted in Southside Virginia in 2014. Click the play button to begin watching. 

Want to learn more? Read our previous story here about Extension agent Taylor Clarke and his on-farm soybean plot. 

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Photo credit (here and images below)-Lindy Tucker

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Additional Resources for Readers:

2014 Virginia On-Farm Soybean Test Plots

Virginia Soybean Update

Virginia Soybean Board

Meet the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

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More commonly abbreviated as “SPAREC” by those familiar with it, this center is one of Virginia Tech’s eleven experiment stations, or “ARECs,” scattered across the state. The stations were each established to perform research and outreach matching the needs of local agricultural industries.

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Sorghum and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids are grown at the station for the livestock forage research program.

For the Southern Piedmont region of Virginia, tobacco remains a key agricultural product with deep historical significance, and forage production is a critical factor keeping cattle, goat, sheep, and horse operations in the area profitable. To serve the farmers growing these products, SPAREC, located in Blackstone in Nottoway County, provides support and cutting-edge information to farm producers. The station has also performed work in small fruit, field crop, and specialty crop production.

While many people in the eastern, central, and northern part of Virginia have never seen tobacco and the number of tobacco farms in the state has dwindled, it remains the 10th ranking agricultural commodity produced in the state just behind wheat, generating $109,000,000 in receipts annually. Much of the tobacco research at SPAREC centers on improving crop management, testing new materials and practices in the greenhouse and the field, and evaluating new varieties. However, the tobacco projects honing in on plant pathology, nematode management, plant breeding, conservation tillage, energy efficiency, and precision application technology have broad implications for other agricultural industries.

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Dr. Charles Johnson, Dr. David Reed, and Dr. Carol Wilkinson each work in one of the unique tobacco research areas at SPAREC. For most of the trials performed at the station, tobacco plants are started in float trays in greenhouses and transplanted to test plots in the spring. The stage after transplanting is called “lay-by,” followed later by flowering when the plants grow tall. Tobacco plants produce pink flowers, but these are “topped,” or removed, so that the plant utilizes its resources on vegetative production. During ripening later in the summer, lower leaves of “flue-cured” tobacco varieties are harvested first, followed later by upper leaves. The leaves are packed in a curing barn and dried by circulating air. “Burley” and “dark-fired” tobacco varieties are harvested all at once; the stalk is cut at ground level, speared on a stick, and hung in a barn. Most Virginia tobacco grows in the counties along the south of the state, where soil characteristics, industry infrastructure, and growing conditions favor production.

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Tobacco grows pink flowers, which are “topped” to promote vegetative growth.

Tobacco remains a primary crop at SPAREC, but forage research is an equally critical program at the station thanks to increased interest from farmers who want to mitigate high livestock production costs by improving forage quality and grazing efficiency. Dr. Chis Teutsch has spent years running trials, compiling variety data, creating forage publications, and speaking at Extension and industry events throughout his years working with legumes, Bermuda grass, crab grass, cool-season grasses, and warm-season annuals like brown mid-rid forage sorghums and sorghum-sudangrass hybrids.

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Dr. Chris Teutsch manages a Bermuda grass research trial at the station.

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To enhance the depth and breadth of the forage program, SPAREC saw the recent addition of a cattle-handling facility and installation of fencing and water troughs on new pasture ground. With the addition of Ruminant Livestock Specialist Dr. Brian Campbell in 2012, the station brought cattle onto the premises for forage utilization studies, grazing schools, demonstrations, cattle management workshops, and research. In fact, since outreach is an important part of the Extension forage work done at SPAREC, producers have numerous opportunities to come visit the station’s cattle facilities and forage plots including a field day each year in July and the many workshops held at the station throughout the year.

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Outreach does not stop with forages. The tobacco specialists also organize a widely-attended annual field day in July and several production meetings for farmers in the winter. Thanks to its central location providing easy access for farmers in several surrounding counties, the station frequently hosts workshops put on by nearby county Extension agents covering topics from beef production to greenhouse management to grain crops.

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The station is equipped with wagons to transport visitors during field days.

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Farm staff have prepared a corn maze for the 2014 Family and Farm Day on September 13th.

Youth agricultural education has become a priority in recent years. Visitors to the annual SPAREC Family and Farm Day witness the station’s commitment to this task and long-standing partnerships with community organizations and agencies. The end result is dozens of hands-on activity stations for the hundreds of children and adults who attend the event to learn about agriculture. This year’s Family and Farm Day, set for September 13 from 9-2, will teach visiting children about soil health, conservation, farm life, livestock, vegetables, crops, insects, wildlife, safety, and farm equipment. SPAREC also hosts Ag Days for 3rd and 5th grade classes for two weeks each April. The Ag Day programs draw buses of students from public and private schools in each county surrounding the station. They continue to grow in attendance each year thanks to the real-life application and reinforcement of classroom lessons and standards of learning they offer.

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Since its formal establishment in 1972, the Southern Piedmont Agricultural Research and Extension Center has been a force for changing, improving, and modernizing agriculture. The end result is a stronger local agricultural economy built by individuals empowered by the knowledge they have gained from the station’s research and outreach.

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Additional Resources for Readers:

Southern Piedmont AREC website

Family and Farm Day flyer

Information about Virginia Tech’s ARECs across the state

Tobacco research, publications, and resources

Forage research, publications, and resources: here and here

Beef cattle publications and resources

Early colonial history of Virginia tobacco from the National Park Service

 

Meet Taylor Clarke’s Soybean Test Plot

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Taylor Clarke hails from south Brunswick and serves Mecklenburg County as the agriculture Extension agent. Most of his work revolves around tobacco, crops, and cattle. Like many Extension agents across the state of Virginia, he also facilitates on-farm research that enables specialists to gauge performance of crops under varying treatments and conditions.

100_1050 (1024x768)Field trials and test plots are responsible for a broad spectrum of scientific advances in agriculture in past decades and these tests help agriculturalists make new progress each year. New fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides can be compared and tested on crops for safety and efficacy. Variety trials performed each year measure the performance of new seed for yield, hardiness, disease resistance, and other traits that can help farmers improve their efficiency and profitability. The end results of these tests are unbiased research-based recommendations that farmers can use to guide planting and purchasing decisions each year.

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Virginia Cooperative Extension’s crop specialists are primarily housed on-campus at Virginia Tech and Virginia State University or at one of eleven agricultural research and extension centers, commonly called “ARECs,” scattered across the state. These specialists perform research on the plots housed at the ARECs, but sometimes they also opt to take their research projects to outside farms.  In some cases, what happens when an experiment is run at the research station plot is not consistent with what happens when it is run on a working farm.  In other cases, the more plots that can be planted around the region, the better the data. For these reasons, specialists make on-farm work an integral part of their studies.

100_1136 (1024x768)This is where county Extension agents like Taylor come in. They communicate regularly with specialists and researchers and foster ongoing face-to-face relationships with local farmers. As a result, Extension agents can locate producers willing to host an on-farm plot and then manage and collect project data from planting to harvest with the support of specialists. Agents in Southside Virginia like Taylor work frequently with the specialists housed at the Southern Piedmont AREC in Blackstone or the Tidewater AREC in Suffolk. Although most data on test plots is compiled at the end of the season and must undergo analysis, farmers benefit in the short-term from these test plots when they are used for Extension field days and demonstrations. Many producers enjoy having the hands-on opportunity to see crop varieties planted side-by-side or visually evaluate plants as they grow in disease resistance or disease treatment plots. 100_1040 (1024x768)

Taylor Clarke runs several tests plots each year, including a 2013 test on his farm evaluating performance of soybeans with and without treatment for soybean rust. Soybean rust, a challenging foliar fungal disease, entered the state in late summer this year and had the potential to hurt yields in field where beans had not reached the “R6” maturity stage. Bean seeds in plants that have reached this stage appear full-sized and are touching within the pod; once the plant reaches this point, infection with soybean rust will not cause significant yield loss. However, specialists worried that some double-crop beans and late-maturing beans had not yet reached R6 when soybean rust entered Virginia this year, so Taylor’s test plot was an effort to evaluate the potential impact of treating double-crop soybean beans that could undergo yield loss if the disease were left unchecked.

100_1059 (1024x768)The field was planted and various sections were treated according to a predetermined experimental design. Because untreated soybean rust hurts yield in plants that have not reached R6 maturity, Taylor chose to use yield as a means to evaluate the performance of the treatments. To collect his data, Taylor used a combine to harvest each section of the plot individually. For every test section of the plot that was cut, the beans were unloaded into a weigh wagon. Each load was then weighed and evaluated for moisture content of the seeds and test weight of the seeds. Test weight measurements give the number of pounds of soybeans in a bushel. After each strip was cut, Taylor measured the length of the harvested strip in order to determine the square feet harvested. He can now use all of his data to determine parameters such as the predicted number of bushels per acre that each test section yielded.

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Harvested beans are unloaded into a weigh wagon.

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The wagon weighs each load from the combine.

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Moisture levels are tested for each load of beans.

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Lunenburg agent Lindy Tucker assists Taylor by measuring test weight on beans from each load.

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Taylor measures the length of each harvested strip in the plot.

On-farm research plots are not the only thing keeping Virginia Cooperative Extension agents like Taylor busy on a day-to-day basis. Other duties include taking phone calls, visiting farmers daily to assist with troubleshooting and management decisions, teaching and facilitating workshops and educational activities, and providing information to meet the needs of agricultural producers, homeowners, and landowners.  Nonetheless, test plots remain a vital part of Extension work because agents appreciate the value that on-farm research brings to agriculture and the role these projects serve in bringing credible, up-to-date information to the people who help grow the nation’s food.

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100_1107 (1024x768)Additional Resources for Readers:

Virginia Soybean Update Blog with Articles Listed by Topic

Virginia On-Farm Soybean Test Plots 2013