News Release
July 30, 2007

SAREC field day highlights alternative energy, Roundup Ready sugar beets

Mud on car, truck and tractor tires at the James C. Hageman Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Center (SAREC) field day near Lingle was ironic.

SAREC director Jim Freeburn summed up Mother Nature’s mood the last year for those touring the trials. “Total precipitation in 2006 was the driest in recorded history and was only 51 percent of normal,” he told producers. From Sept. 1, 2007, to early July this year, the area only received 4.99 inches, while the average rainfall is about 10 inches.

More than 100 toured crop and plant disease research July 26 and also viewed the wind and solar energy demonstration from the University of Wyoming for pumping water to livestock and the small biofuel production plant that compressed biofuel crop seed to make biofuel oil.

“I thought the field day went very well,” said Freeburn. “We had good attendance and a very diverse crowd.”

People attended from Wyoming, western Nebraska and northern Colorado.

Highlighted were Roundup Ready sugar beet research, potato and sugar beet disease research, winter wheat trials, various pea and bean research, spring and winter grain variety trials and fetal programming steer research.

The beet research near Lingle follows the first-in-the-world Roundup Ready sugar beet crop by Big Horn Basin producers.

The research was spearheaded by Stephen D. Miller, associate dean in the College of Agriculture and director of the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station, and Abdel Mesbah, director of the UW Powell Research and Extension Center.

There is no residual Roundup after the herbicide is applied, and Andrew Kniss, who will start Aug. 1 as an assistant professor in the UW College of Agriculture’s Department of Plant Sciences, is studying how to minimize Roundup applications but control weeds after applications.

He’s also studying how using the technology will affect production practices. “This will not only change weed control practices but transform how the crop is grown,” he said. “How is this technology going to transform sugar beet production? We don’t have the answers to that yet.”

The biofuel crop trials – camelina, canola and brown mustard – drew renewed interest with the high fuel prices, but the market that has developed using vegetable oil for biodiesel has already had an impact within the region with higher sunflower prices, said Jim Krall, SAREC agronomist and a professor in the College of Agriculture’s Department of Plant Sciences.

The vegetable oil from sunflowers has filled a niche in the edible food market vacated by soybean oil used for biodiesel.

The sunflower market infrastructure within the region appears to be well established. The crop has been grown within the region for several decades, and local producer experience is likely higher than for canola, camelina or brown mustard, he said.

“If a producer has not tried sunflowers personally, the producer has a neighbor who has,” noted Krall.

The maturity of the industry surrounding the three crops is about where sunflowers was 15 to 20 years ago, he said.

“Private and public investment in production technology research and development has increased substantially the last three to four years,” said Krall. “I can’t predict what will happen in the marketplace, but current production technology research and development investment in oilseed crops is higher than any other period over the 23 years of my career at the University of Wyoming.”

Krall said one of the best sources about biofuels is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Biodiesel for the High Plains Web site www.panhandle.unl.edu/biodiesel/biodiesel.htm. Krall can be reached at (307) 837-2000 or jkrall@uwyo.edu.

SAREC facilities allow research in not only crops but livestock. Bret Hess, an associate professor in the Department of Animal Science, described his fetal programming research being conducted with the U.S. Department of Agricultural Research Station in Fort Keogh, Mont.

Although preliminary, the research has found that nutrition from mid-gestation into the last trimester can influence the feedlot performance and slaughter weight of the male offspring by as much as 50 pounds. Hess can be reached at (307) 766-5173 or brethess@uwyo.edu.

On the Web: http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/uwexpstn/

Audio File: SAREC Director Jim Freeburn discusses field day.mp3

Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor
Phone: (307) 766-6342
E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu
Archived News Site http://uwadmnweb.uwyo.edu/UWAG/news.asp

###