The 2014 CREC Field Day took place on Tuesday, July 15. The weather conditions for the day were perfect as the day’s temperatures hovered around 70 and the winds were minor. These conditions were certainly welcome since recent CREC Field Days have often experienced mid-day temperatures in the upper 80’s! The excellent weather along with what we feel was a solid educational program resulted in a large audience with people coming from across a wide region.

The morning tours were well attended with over 300 participants on the four tours.  The crop variety and production tour highlighted kochia management in soybean, corn development and N fertilizer recommendations, timing of weed control in corn and soybean, soybean production research and recommendations, managing white mold in dry bean and soybean, sulfur fertility in corn and wheat, and barley and spring wheat variety updates.  Please check our website in the coming days at www.ag.ndsu.edu/CarringtonREC/videos for videos of the various agronomy tour presentations.  The livestock tour focused on cow herd profitability, reducing breeding costs, whole-farm forage resource management, drylot cow production, manure as a resource, producer feedout results, fodder beets for feedlot finishing, corn particle size in finishing diets, fat levels in distillers grains, corn tempering methods for cattle diets and UAS in livestock research.  The organic research and education tour presented organic wheat breeding at the University of Manitoba, organic oat production, North Central SARE programs, buckwheat varieties and their role in sustainability, cow pea and field pea varieties, ancient grains project, organic dry bean breeding at the University of Minnesota, using winter rye as a weed suppression crop and einkorn accession evaluation.  The Northern Hardy Fruit tour was especially well attended as participants came from across North Dakota and surrounding states. The agenda featured a walking tour of 13 fruit crops and a presentation by Dr. Bob Bors of the University of Saskatchewan on haskaps and hardy cherries.

Tour participants enjoyed a lunch served by the Chieftain Conference Center and made possible by sponsorship from the Northarvest Bean Growers Association, the Northern Canola Growers Association, the Northern Pulse Growers Association, the North Dakota Wheat Commission and the North Dakota Barley Council.

The afternoon program, ‘Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Agriculture’, focused on a new research collaboration at the Center. The tour agenda provided updates on this project that is designed to verify the effectiveness of UAS-mounted sensors to assess field crop and livestock management challenges. The tour began with John Nowatzki of NDSU’s Ag and Biosystems Engineering department reviewing the objectives of the proof-of-concept project. The group then heard from Nick Flom of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences at UND discuss the logistics of gathering information for the project. The UND flight team conducted a series of UAS research flights among trials near the field where the tour was conducted. CREC researchers reviewed aerial imagery data gathered and compared that with ground-based observations.  Lt. Governor Drew Wrigley and Robert Becklund then discussed the significance of North Dakota being one of only six UAS test sites in the nation and the first to initiate test flights. They both shared how agriculture will play an important role with this evolving technology.

We would like to thank those of you who were able to attend for joining us and welcome everyone to give us a call (701.652.2951) anytime you would like to stop by and see what's new at the Carrington REC!

Blaine Schatz
Director & Agronomist