MU Hundley-Whaley Field Day set for Sept. 6 in Albany

Jim Curley, Information Specialist, Extension & Ag Information, University of MO

Tours on corn and soybean production, weed control, alternative crops and environmental quality will highlight the Hundley-Whaley Farm Field Day Sept. 6.

Tours begin at 8 a.m. and the last wagons load between 1 p.m. and 1:30 p.m. at the University of Missouri farm on the southwest edge of Albany. United Electric Co-op will provide coffee, juice and rolls at registration. The King City Young Farmers will serve a free barbecue lunch at noon.

There will be four tours this year, said Don Null, University Outreach and Extension agronomist and research farm supervisor. Weed control research is featured on two of the tours. More than 50 industry representatives and MU researchers will make presentations.

Researchers at the center are conducting nearly 40 weed control studies on more than 2,000 plots. Each has been prepared, treated and rated for weed control. Researchers continue to test a few new herbicides, including several different formulations of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. Visitors can see how well these generic formulations worked.

“The Environmental Quality tour is new this year,” Null said. “It has one weed control study comparing low rates or no rates of atrazine to normal use-rates of atrazine for corn production.” Other stops on that tour include over-seeding of forbs and wildflowers, agroforestry, filter strips, precision agriculture, eastern gamma grass, and tillage and drainage.

Both the corn and soybean production tours include weed control stops. Both also include stops on variety testing and other areas.

On the corn side, MU Extension state entomologist Wayne Bailey will talk about new corn insecticide seed treatments. Holt County agronomy specialist Rick Bottoms will discuss profitability of Bt corn versus other hybrids. An industry specialist will talk about some of the new varieties of high-starch corn.

“The soybean tour should be interesting,” Null said. “Steve Norberg has a study of soybean establishment relative to seed quality and germination rates. It may explain why some of our area farmers had so many problems getting stands established. We had some people planting up to four times.”

The soybean tour also will have stops on date-of-planting and seeding rates, early season diseases and soy diesel. MU state soybean specialists will talk about some of the bean varieties being developed for their oil quality production potential.

Norberg, regional agronomy specialist with University Outreach and Extension, also is coordinating the alternative crops tour. Alex Ching, from Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, Mo., and Rob Myers, with the Jefferson Institute, Columbia, Mo., will be among the presenters talking about kenaf, amaranth, sunflowers, pink beans and buckwheat.

As usual, farm machinery will be on display in the exhibit area.

The 300-acre MU farm is located at the junction of South Birch and Orton streets. The farm was made possible through the generosity of the Elma Hundley and Lulu Whaley estates. Research at the farm is supported financially by the Missouri Agriculture Experiment Station, the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council, the Bonnie Clark Memorial Fund and crop protection and seed companies. University Outreach and Extension, The Hundley-Whaley Planning Committee, MU Agricultural Experiment Station, Extension Commercial Agriculture Program and area agribusinesses cooperate in sponsoring the field day.