The Fisher Delta Research Center at Portageville, Mo., will offer a variety of insightful presentations during its Field Day on Friday, Sept. 2. Registration begins at 6 a.m., with a breakfast and program following at 7 a.m. Tours begin at 9 a.m.

The event is free and open to the public. Along with the free breakfast, a free lunch will be served at noon.

“This is always an exciting time when we can share a small sample of the professional research the team does here every day,” Director Trent Haggard said. “Truthfully, we wish we had more time to share more of what we do.”

There will be four tour options: soybean, cotton, corn and rice. Each will offer attendees a closer look at important research being conducted at the Fisher Delta Research Center.

Tour wagons will depart at 9 a.m., 10:10 a.m., 11:20 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

“We perform research on an extremely wide number of soils, crops and management practices,” Haggard said. “Therefore, each research team leader offers up numerous possible topics for the Field Day. Generally, we decide which single topic is the most valuable and timely.”

The cotton and corn tours will both feature talks on precision agriculture, among several other topics.

“Precision agriculture is where a producer can fine tune and drive costs down while driving yields up,” Haggard said. “Costs and yields are important factors to any producer in any given year, but even more so when margins are tight. We also have many producers managing a larger number of acres than in the past. Some of these tools can assist a producer to better manage the crop needs through remote sensing and real-time information fed through the phone in their pocket.

“With improved seed trait selection combined with precision ag solutions, we are getting closer and closer to spoon-feeding the plants exactly what they need, when they need it, for maximum yield output, and to feed the growing population of our world.”

The soybean tour will feature talks on five new conventional varieties for the Mid-South, responsible management of dicamba products and an entomological IT platform for agriculture.

The rice tour will showcase Delta’s variety trials, relevant phone apps for managing nitrogen and irrigation, and the use of gypsum as a sulfur additive for crop management.

Grover Shannon, a soybean breeder at Delta, has been researching soybeans for years and has released more than 100 varieties in his career. His discussion will highlight five new varieties.

“Grover and our soybean breeding team at the Delta Research Center have a super-productive track record,” Haggard said. “They release four to six new varieties into the market every year. The check-off dollars invested in our program have a tremendous return on investment. Furthermore, Grover has a celebrated record of collaborating well with many other soybean breeders across the United States and the world.”

The Fisher Delta Research Center is located at Junction T & TT in Portageville, Mo.

For more information about the Field Day, call (573) 379-5431 or email Haggard at [email protected].

For more information about the Fisher Delta Research Center, visit delta.cafnr.org.