 I'd like to welcome everybody to the spring RER research extension center conference and then right now we're doing the research extension center crash course, which is a 10-minute summary of each REC from across the state. We're going to go ahead and get started and try and stay on schedule as we are recording it, but we do have 20 minutes to half an hour at the end for discussion and questions. And if you're a new faculty member and wanted to say a comment of who you are and what program you're working in, that'd be great. We're going to save that to the end so we can stay on schedule. Our first presenter today is Dr. Kevin Sedevic from the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center. Kevin, the floor is yours. Thanks, Krishna. I sure appreciate you coming on this afternoon and giving us a chance to show your kind of our showcase of our research stations and so put together about a 10 slide powerpoint to see what we have to offer and kind of what our model is and what we're shooting for in terms of research and extension programming. I'm currently the director for the Central Grasslands Research Extension Center. I've been there since 2016 as the interim director. I'm also a faculty and extension specialist located here on the main station campus in Fargo. You know, and our goal at the research station is really to address the citizens of North Dakota and do research and extension programming that enhances the lives while improving ecosystem services and conservation of our grasslands. We are a grassland station and our focus is grassland management as it relates to livestock production and ecosystem services. We try to achieve these goals through collaborative research with the main station scientists and other REC directors through integrated research programs. You know, we look at benefits and disadvantages of collaboration and I wanted to put this as a starting point because there's obviously benefits and there's going to obviously be some some disadvantages and so the benefits we look at we provide more opportunities to conduct new and innovative research and we get a better opportunity to increase training of graduate students. These are the future leaders of our industry and our land managers. They reduce the costs for labor per project and for us it requires less scientists to be hired at the research station. We can use those scientists that are on the stations or at the main station as collaboration scientists versus hiring new scientists and it increases the efficiency of our land and animals. We can do more with more people with our available resources. We're talking about center-providing land and animals. It puts greater stress and demand on our permanent staff and facilities. In many cases, depending on the research trial, we need to invest in new infrastructure or temporary housing. In our case it's fencing, water, laboratory, cattle handling equipment. We do provide summer seasonals and graduate students. When we get into collaborative projects, there are certain grants that can actually hire some of the seasonals as well. We provide partial or total funding for some graduate students and seasonal employees and what we find through time is that a lot of the grants that we can achieve then can provide the funding for these grad students and the other negative is with reduced scientists we see potential for adding income for grants is reduced and the caveat to that is if you have a great collaborative team with other RECs or main station scientists, they become part of your writers on these grants to support the projects with other grants. So this is a map, does this show up fine Chris? Yes. All right. So this is a map of the grassland station and it's about 5,300 contiguous acres. We're about two-thirds grasslands, one-third tillable acres. So you can see in all these dark black lines are basically fences for infrastructure that we have in place in terms of grazing strategies. The red lines is our tillable acres, whether it's used for crop ground or forage production to support the herd. And in many cases, we can also do research trials on these these same lands that look at maybe integrated livestock and cropping systems. Down the bottom here is our main office as well as our livestock facilities and we'll kind of go through these individually. So we have about 5,300 acres of which 3,300 acres is native range pasture land. We have just under 2,000 acres of tillable land and about 120 acres of wetlands. We run about a 450 brood cow herd with 25 mature bulls. We have about 200 plus yearling heifers, 200 steers, 35 to 70 coal cows depending on the year and 10 cannulated heifers. This is a fairly large herd that provides opportunity to do large-scale research on the resources as well as looking at individual other trials with livestock trials that we can look at reproduction or nutrition. My rule of thumb on the research station is that every animal on the station has to do at least two projects just to make it more efficient. We support range research, pasture, livestock, forages, soils, wildlife, pollinators and precision ag research and extension programming. The facilities that we have on the place of the headquarters is the headquarter building with office space and a computer cluster. We have Wi-Fi throughout the center including in our housing. We have a new range and forage laboratory. We have a livestock working facility and a pen system. We want to do any pen type of research for livestock. Most of the pen type of research though is either done at Carrington or at the main station in Fargo. We do have a forage agronomy plots in place and we have crop land for cover crop and late season grazing opportunities. We have housing units available for 22 people whether it's seasonals or grad students and we have a great local community that people can enjoy. We are really in the middle of nowhere. We're about 10 miles from the local community of Streeter. We're about an hour, hour and 10 from Bismarck and about 45 minutes from Jamestown. It's beautiful country if you're familiar with the Prairie Pottle region. It is kind of the main center for the for our duck factory of the lower 48. So it is a beautiful area to enjoy. We do have 11 full-time staff and two part-time staff. We have two scientists, a livestock scientist and a rain scientist. We have two research specialists, a rain specialist and a forage specialist. Our herdsman and herdsman has two livestock technicians to help with the research projects as well as managing the livestock herd. We have one agronomy technician which helps with the farming operation as well as our agronomy plots and we have one range technician that helps with the range of research trials. We have two extension state specialists, one's livestock and one's range and we have one administrative assistant which does everything, accounting, payroll, time slips, cooks to food. She really does everything and it's the sand here in the picture to the right. We were fortunate to have someone that can do a lot of stuff for one person. Of course, we have the director and we use you higher about 10 to 14 summer seasonals to help with the research projects. I think last year we had 13 seasonals for our projects. We do support and I'm a big proponent of the graduate student model. For example, if you look at February 2021, we currently have 15 graduate students that are working collaboratively with other scientists or RECs on the station. We have eight in range science. We have two in animal science. Of the eight in range, we have three PhDs and five master students. In animal science, we have one PhD and one masters. The caveat here is we do fund. The grassland station does fund three of these range students and we fund one animal science student. We also have five other students that are working under grants, two in NRM, one in precision ag, one in plant sciences, and one in microbiology. The point of this slide is really to show you the diversity that we can work with in terms of providing opportunity for scientists at the station is just not range. We really cover a lot of different topics that fit the natural resources. The opportunity to do research and a number of different questions and arenas is available. With the graduate student model, our goal is to get these graduate students out. We have had 10 graduate students finish up their programs in the last four years, four in range, five in animal science and one in soils. Of course, the goal of these students as well as faculty is to get peer reviewed publications. This enhances promotion, so we work. Everything we do has to be able to be publishable. We've done 28 peer reviewed publications in the last four years. I'm a big proponent of research reports. Not everybody looks at research reports, but I think it's a great avenue to get the story out to our local constituents as well as our legislators. It's a great opportunity for graduate students to write. We've also done a couple of extension publications. To summarize, what we're looking for is we want collaborators that address the critical questions that meet the need of our North Dakota citizens. The RECs are a great opportunity to collect pre-data, which leads to higher success and securing extramural funds. Pre-data is a great way to get some information for over a one or two year period, and then the grants, the opportunities to get grants really goes up high. We ask anyone to come out to the station and respect our staff, our students, and our community, and we do the same for them. You need to enjoy the outdoors. If you're going to come to Stringer, we really want you to enjoy the outdoors. It's a beautiful venue. The opportunity to just enjoy the outdoors is there. All projects need to be appropriately designed with replication, so they're publishable. When we ask scientists to come out, no matter where you're from, we expect them when we ask them to hold their weight. I don't expect my staff to do all the work, and so it's a team approach, and I look at a team approach with the main station and other RECs. We do prefer the graduate student model, and we expect the research to be published in peer reviewed articles, research reports, and extension circulars were appropriate. I'm sure my time is up. I do want to thank you for the time, and I'll stay on as I can. This is our contact information. This is my cell phone if you have any questions or want to visit, and this is our address from the Grassland Station as well as available. Our next Research Extension Center is the Dickinson REC with Dr. Chris Augustine giving the presentation, and the floor is yours, and you can share. I'm director of the Dickinson Research Extension Center. I have been around here for about 11 months now, so I'm pretty new to this to be in here. I'll share with you guys some of the things that we have going on, and what opportunities you might see through the Dickinson Research Center. So with the DREC, we have over 8,000 acres for a land base. It's a mixture of grazing land, forage, we do livestock research, and also agronomic research. 6,200 of those acres are owned, 1,900 of which are rented. And so on this map here, where my cursor is right at Dickinson, that's where our main headquarters are. And down to the southwest is Pyramid Park, that is right in the Badlands. Just to the northwest of our main office is our northwest 23 where we have a mixture of agronomy, as well as haylands and a little bit of range. Up to the north here is where our ranch headquarters are located near Manning. That's about a 25-minute drive north of Dickinson. Over here to the east a little bit, that little L-shaped parcel, that is the 4-H Land Trust. Down to the south and east is our Bain Research Farm, and then over here by Richardson is where we have some grazing lands that the name of that parcel is escaped my mind right now. I know I got it listed coming up. But here's a little bit closer map of where these areas are. So we have a whole bunch of land available to do research on and we are kind of spread out. So up in the top left quadrant is zoomed in on that Manning Ranch headquarters. Up there we have currently we have about 790 head of cattle, 385 cows, I think 200 are backgrounded, about 150 replacement heifers, and then we also have some feedlot facilities there. So up there is a mixture of rangeland, hayland, and then we do have fields that would be available for some agronomy work. Down south, or I guess below that one in the bottom left-hand corner, that is aerial photo appearing to park, like I said, that is right in the badlands. And then this parcel to the on the right hand side, that is our main office, which we're just off of interstate. And that's mostly cropland in that area. And then on our next slide here's the Bain Research Farm, so that was south and east of Richardson. And then the Schnell Recreation Area was at that area just to the east of Richardson. And this is mostly grazing land. And without we have a relationship with, I believe it's the Bureau of Land Management, where we could do grazing work on. One of the things that we have at the main office is we have a large horticulture area. My predecessors were very proactive in developing some horticulture stuff. And so we have a lot of trees available, as well as perennial plants. I'll show you that in a little bit. But here's a zoomed in area of some of the things that we have going on, where we have organic plots. We have over 10 acres of certified organic cropland. And then we have an area here for conventional plots. Most of the area is no-till. And one of the things that we're working on is a virtual arboretum or horticulture project, where we'd like to have the general public be able to come in and use QR codes with their smartphones and being taken to specific trees of interest. And this is kind of what we have going on with that. It's a Google map that John Sticker, a GIS person, developed. And we are in the process of cataloging all the different trees and ornamentals that are grown here. I believe we have over 150 varieties of species of trees. So for some of our infrastructure, we have a large classroom at our main office. And this is the main office in the picture, where we can house about 45 people for a workshop. We do have three other smaller conference rooms. We have had some issues with acoustics in the past, being HECO-E and Athenian system that is terrible for trying to have some of this transformational education going on. And that stuff has been addressed in as much better. Up at the ranch headquarters in Chanel, we have a small conference room where we can fit about 30 people. And you do have smart boards up there. And that's where you're looking for workshops. So we do have facilities up there that can house that. We do have housing for seasonal staff, researchers, as well as graduate students. I think we can house about 15 people. Most of our autonomy is long-term no-till. And like I said, we have a little bit over 10 acres of certified organic land here as well. So for our staff, a handful of the different leaders that we have here. One is Gary Ockmar. He's our ranch manager up at the Manningran. Daph, Doug Landbloom is our animal scientist. Lee Manson is our range scientist. Glenn Martin is our autonomy technician. And Ryan Beto is our property systems extension specialist. And being that there are some faculty people out here, we are looking for summer students for livestock and agronomy. So if you know somebody that's looking for a summer job, please send them our way. So that's a quick rundown of our facilities. Thank you. Is there any quick questions for Dr. Augustine? Great question. If I could ask. So you mentioned about the organic plots you have at your facility. I was wondering how old are these organic plots and what kind of treatments you have going in there? Sure. So historically, we had a research agronomist who did a lot of organic research. That person left a few years ago. And honestly, not much has gone out there. It's been alfalfa for four more years. Some of our certified organic land, I believe, is 10 or 15 years organic. Some of it is, it just came up and is now certified. So some of the things that I'm looking at that I'm interested in is looking at the microbiome of the organic versus the conventional thing, which I assume that's kind of what you're curious about. I've had some conversations with Dr. Gash in the soils department about that. And right now, all that we'll be doing with organic research is just variety trials for the next few years until what I've been informed with trying to develop an organic program. You really, first thing you need to have is certified land, which we have, but then you also need to develop some sort of resume. And so with the variety trials, we're hoping to do that. Maybe down the road, there's the right program and I could get a postdoc or a soft funded position, something like that. That is what I'm hoping for. We'll see what happens. Well, thank you, Dr. Augustine. And thank you for the question. We're going to go ahead and move on to the next Research Extension Center. Jerry Bergman up at Williston. And you have been shared, you can share your screen if you would like. Williston Research Extension Center was actually started in 1907 as an irrigated station. And then in 1954, it was moved from where now Williston State College is out four miles west of Williston on an 800 acre farm, which is shown in the picture on your right. This is where most of our dry land research is done. In 2001, we did purchase 160 acres, 23 miles northeast of Williston, National Valley, where our irrigation research and development project was established and is ongoing. Most of the information on all our research is updated each year on our website, on the ag research update for this year would be 2020. It will list all our staff and all of the research that they're doing. This study is done in cooperation with the MSU Eastern Ag Research Center that also has these results there. This is some of the work that Dr. Jordan Prottam is doing. He's doing a soybean planting date study and a flag seeding date and rate study. He's using drone on all of his studies and these are pictures taken from his drone. He's also looking at using drone to collect agronomic data on all our variety trials and also studying the optimum irrigation amount and timing for soybeans with Tyler and then also doing a derm seeding date and rate study, not only to get optimum yield, but also to get low grain cadmium, which is an issue in some of our fields out west. The next program that we have is the pathology program run by Dr. Kalyle. She works on these four crops, pulse crops, sugar beads, derm and tenola. Also shown on this slide is Tahini, her research specialist in Ivana, her research technician. She does have quite a bit of summer help in addition to this staff. Her approach is threefold. One is crop rotation, where she will study root rot, soil health and nodulation, fungicide aspect, where she works with chickpeas and derm principally and then genetic resistance studies on field peas, chickpeas, and fusarium resistance and derm variety. Our dry land variety trials, we do test varieties on about 15 different crops. This is a major effort that's done with the NDSU breeders, Montana State, private companies, and even other countries that submit varieties for testing. Another part of this is they collaborate with the seed increase program and narcota crop improvement and getting the new and improved varieties produced to get out to our producers. Jim Streak is our soil scientist and these are showing the projects he works on. One is soil surface acidification, no-till high-end rates of pH drops and so he's studying remedies on how to treat low pH under no-till. Also, he's doing work on saline-seed reclamation. A lot of work on crop water used is influenced by a crop sequence. He's also working with Goldham using water use measurements on soybeans, flax, and also a pipeline reclamation project where we had a 36-inch pipeline come across our dry land site and they're doing studies on the best way to reclaim that soil back to normal productivity. The irrigation project Jim's working on is the optimal irrigation for the different irrigated crops as well as the effect of tillage, no-till, and conventional till on water used in the corn-soybean barley rotation. Tyler Shalde is agronomist that is managing the National Valley Irrigation Project. He has two research specialists, Justin Jacobs and Adriana Turinquist. Again, this was started in 2001 and it's really gained interest by our irrigated growers in all the aspects of crop production, irrigation management, water use studies, and IPM. I think as this moves forward, there'll be more work on variable rate irrigation. This is some of the 2020 projects that Tyler listed. Again, a lot on management, water use, crop rotations, disease studies, comparing water sources from the lake and from groundwater, a variety trials, and he does help Kyle Dragseth on foundation seed increase of some varieties of foundation seed. A horticultural program right now, we have a vacant position there but we are carrying out the All-American Selection Display Garden and a Hascap trial that was established in 2017 and we'll continue to evaluate that with seasonal workers that we have. This shows a new study we're going to be doing on strawberries, comparing high tunnel, low tunnel, and open field. This is done in cooperation with the NDSU Horticultural Program. Claire Keene is our Extension Cropping Specialist and this shows some of the highlights that she's working on. One of her main objectives is training county agents but she also is the lead Extension person on organic certification and production support. Her research is being done on currenza and intercropping and she also is doing on farm demonstrations on pipeline reclamation and the currenza new crop that's a perennial green. One of the important aspects of our center's foundation seed program, the building shown here on the right is our new foundation seed plant. Currently the mill right and electricians are starting to install the seed cleaning line and we expect this to be up and running in June. This last year Kyle Dragseth produced 24 different varieties of 11 different crops and he also has leased additional crop acres for pure seed production. This plant will produce or process about 200 bushel per hour compared to our old plant of 35 bushel per hour. That kind of covers what I had to present and would welcome any potential collaboration with other scientists from NDSU and other centers. Thank you Jerry. We're going to move right into our next presenter which is Brian Jenks from the North Central Research Extension Center and you can share Brian. My name is Brian Jenks. We'd sign us with NDSU here in Minot. We have I have shown here three pictures of our facilities. We focus on mostly agronomy, plant breeding, weed science and entomology. We previously had emphasis also on soil science, livestock, and one other one. But I anyway because of budget constraints we no longer have individuals in those positions but hopefully that will change in the future. So here's our main office building. We have a large meeting room for grower meetings, a couple of smaller meeting rooms for smaller meetings. Down the bottom left here is the seed increase program facilities. This larger building right here is the new seed cleaning facility which is just getting up and running. And this is our agronomy research lab in the bottom right where we have a few dry labs and a wet lab and which is then also connected to our greenhouse. As far as individuals, of course, Shayna Forster is our director and we have two individuals to help us for administrative and secretarial positions. Our foundation seed increase program is currently being manned by Andrew Birch. Unfortunately, he's the lone man carrying the load here. We've had a couple of other individuals who took other positions recently and there's about 1400 acres that are dedicated to the foundation seed increase program that you either own or leased. And my understanding is we're speaking in part here to individuals who are new faculty and maybe you're not familiar with what the foundation seed increase program is. Basically, the mission is to provide producers with diverse crops and varieties that are well adapted to the region. And then these varieties are made available through county crop and ag improvement associations. The crops and varieties that will be available for the 2021 season would be barley, Durham, flax, spring wheat, oat, peas, and soybeans. These are the crops that we work with. Other research centers may have different crops. Eric Ericsmoan directs the agronomy research. Eric is the research agronomist. He has Austin and Darby working with him. They focus on various cropping systems and production studies with many seed company variety trials and breeder nurseries. They focus a lot on cereal grains, barley, Durham, spring wheat, et cetera. Many broadleaf crops, canola, sunflower, soybean, dry bean, safflower, and more. And then many new or alternative crops that are evaluated for their agronomic traits. Eric does a lot of research in many different areas. This is just a very brief summary of some. He conducts some no-till versus conventional tillage studies evaluating barley, Durham, spring wheat, and oat, soil fertility studies, and then in various crops. And then also they have at least three off-station research sites to evaluate many crops throughout North Central North Dakota. These are a list. This is a list of many of the crops that have been studied or evaluated here in Minot. This is not an all-inclusive list. Obviously, you see on the left many small grain crops, many oil seed crops, and also many legume crops and others. Now, all of these are not studied every year, but these are some that have been studied over the past. And a large focus for Eric now is the hemp. Hannah Worrell is our pulse crop breeder. She focuses on dry peas, chickpeas, and lentil. She works in the field season, obviously designing, planting, and managing studies. Then in the winter, very busy processing seeds and analyzing data and getting ready for meetings and preparing publications in the winter. The pulse crop program has a two-pronged approach with the main campus as well as here in Minot. So on the main campus, the focus is primarily on discovery and evaluation of new germplasm with rapid hybridization to create superior progenies. Most of the work is done in a greenhouse and lab environment. And then in Minot, the focus is mostly on evaluating advanced breeding lines. And then Minot is also the location where graduate students and postdocs can focus on some of their fieldwork. For our extension education, Travis Proska is our entomologist. He's very busy in many areas, which I'll cover in a minute. We have three positions that are not currently filled. Our extension agronomist, this position is filled, but not filled. That's because the individual who accepted the position is stuck in Brazil. And due to visa issues, has not been able to join us yet, but hopefully he will soon. And then also we have two vacant positions that maybe will be filled down the road in soil health and livestock. So Travis works in extension education, focusing mostly on entomology, works a lot with agents, growers, water culturists and 4-H, works on educating in many very important areas, such as an IPM crop survey of soybean, sunflower, wheat and barley, where he shows ID of plant disease and insect damage and recording of incidents. And then publishing those results in the crop and pest report, as well as other areas. And also crop surveys of wheat, mage, sunflower, canola, and he conducts research on other topics as well. He has a large focus on horticulture with various topics of interest to gardeners and those interested in landscaping, proper use of pesticides, establishment, development of bee hotels, and conservation of pollinators and beneficial insects. He does a lot of work with 4-H and insect education, as well as serving as a judge on a county and state level. For grape research, Chris Osmondson covers this area. She has evaluated over 5,000 vines since 2013. These include crosses of hardy wild vines and quality wine cultivars, and they select the topic sessions for further study. As for 2020 research, more than 1,000 figure lines have been removed. Fruit data has been gathered from 1,200 plants, production of 72 white wines, and 166 red wines. And then the scoring by industry leaders revealed six silver and 28 bronze category wines. And then fork sessions were selected for further study. For weed science, I am joined by Tiffany Walter, Gary Wilby, and Dana Pesik. We have conducted weed control studies in about 26 different crops over the time that I've been here. Usually, we're focusing on probably eight to 10 crops each year. We focus on how to control challenging weeds. Most farmers use herbicides to control weeds, and therefore, we put a lot of time into helping them have access to more products and know how to use them to reduce input costs. We do research to provide data for registration of new products, to update labels of existing products, and then how to manage weed resistance. Some of the weeds that we focus on, kosher wild buckwheat, winter annuals, narrowleaf hawks, beard, horseweed, and then grasses, green foxtail, wild oat. Here's an example of one of the issues we're dealing with with resistance, herbicide resistance. Here's our susceptible population. Here is a farmer sample where the herbicides are not controlling the wild oat. Also, kosher is a big weed for us. We're trying to learn how to control kosher better in a burn down. Here, glyphosate is not controlling the kosher, but another treatment that we evaluated authority MTZ did control the kosher. Other weeds of interest, this is narrowleaf hawks beard, a weed that's shown up in the western part of the state. This is actually a soybean field, but it looks like a hawks beard field. And then horseweed is another big problem for us in the west and actually across the whole state. Palmer amaranth and waterhemp are not in this area yet, but we're trying to, I have been part of the team that has tried to manage the Palmer amaranth that has shown up in the state and then these two weeds are weeds that we do not want in the western part of the state. You guys can keep these in the east and we'll be happy. That's all I have. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Brian. Our next research extension center to be highlighted would be the Carrington Research Extension Center, Mike Ossley, the agronomist at Carrington is giving the presentation and the floor is yours. You can share. Thank you for giving me the time here. It's kind of fun to see what everybody else is doing as kind of a reminder. So yes, I'm presenting on behalf of the Carrington Research Extension Center. We're about two hours out of Fargo to the northwest, kind of in this transition area between the eastern versus western climate in the state. And we have a number pretty robust program lined up out here at Carrington. I'm just going to show this little video we had this last summer. We planted this nice little canola soybean plot and as a way to welcome people back last summer after COVID was supposed to be over. So I guess we'll see what happens this year. Anyway, as you can see here, we're looking over one of our center pivot fields. We have both dryland and irrigated agriculture in Carrington. Certainly dryland is a large bit of that focus. It's maybe 25 or 30 percent of what we do is irrigated agriculture. In total, there's around 2,000 acres, the majority of which are rented every year. So we're pretty reliant on the surrounding area to maintain our productivity, especially on the foundation seed stocks into things. So I put together just this kind of flowchart here to help better understand some of the programmatic areas we have out at Carrington. We kind of start out with the three main functions that can happen at an REC. We have the crops research, animal research, and foundation seed stocks. All three components have been pretty successful currently and in the past in carrying out our mission. The crop science side is broken out into four scientist positions. So we have Dr. Michael Wunch in plant pathology, Dr. Jasper Tebow in soil science, myself in agronomy. And then, as you heard earlier, we have Dr. David Kramer in our precision egg program. But we also have several other areas of more intense focus, which include our fruit project, which is managed by Kathy Widerholt. And Steve Zwinger is managing our organic research program. And then we also have the Oaks irrigation research site, which is managed by Kelly Cooper, located in Oaks, North Dakota. So it's quite a diversity of research projects, research types that are occurring out here on an annual basis. I guess I'll move on. So just to go a little bit further into some of what we're doing, we are really happy with the new lab facility that we have and the greenhouse that's attached to it. So we've been able to take pretty good advantage of the facilities thus far. And we're still just kind of tapping into that potential right now. And there's a lot of new areas that I think we're going to be able to move into research-wise with those facilities that are really going to help out with us serving our mission. We have a pretty robust livestock feedlot facilities as well. We have some capacity for livestock research beyond the feedlot, but I'd say that's certainly the largest strength. And again, we were another recipient of a new seed cleaning plant from the legislature with our seed stocks program, which again was really, really needed on that side and has made working conditions tremendously better for that group, as well as enhancing the capacity. And we certainly do have conference and meeting rooms available for internal and external use at Carrington. So some of the other things to note here is that we end up doing quite a lot of collaboration out here as well. And part of the reason is because it's a relatively short distance from campus. So we have really strong collaborations with almost all the plant breeders and then other researchers from campus that work out here on an annual basis. So in many cases, we have really good resources to help set up field trials for success. And we will invite collaborators to come out and with any kind of involvement, whether they want to, whether we're just providing the space or providing additional resources beyond that. We have quite a range of environments that we work with. So again, we have both the dry land and irrigated as well as till and no till conditions and then again, the organic research out here. And then because we have these different components, there have been opportunities we've been trying to foster that involve more integrated crop livestock opportunities. Someone asked a couple months ago what it is that the focus is for the agronomic research out here. And it actually took me a little while to respond. But kind of what I came up with was what we're focused on is land use efficiency and crop quality. So the, if you were to put an umbrella over a lot of the work that myself and the others are doing, most of it falls within that, within one of those categories. So and again, right now, our research is primarily field-based practical research. And with that, we have a pretty good lineup of equipment options for doing a lot of different tasks, some of them, some kind of odd pieces of equipment here and there that don't exist a lot of other places. They can't vouch that all of it's in a tip top shape, but like any like anyone else, we're always trying to improve what we have and what we have the ability to do. And again, like myself, a lot of the other researchers out here are pretty broad interests and are willing to facilitate whatever opportunities avail. So and then of course, because of our location, you know, we have a pretty good exposure to the constituents around us for both the outreach side and also the feedback side from farmers and other agribusinessmen in the area. So with that, if anybody is interested, I can certainly facilitate other communications too if people want to contact me, I can point them in the right direction for some different collaborators for whatever projects people might have in mind. So I think that's really all I have to share. So thank you, Mike. Our next research extension center that we're highlighting is Langdon. Brian Hansen, the agronomist is giving the presentation and you should be able to share on the floor is yours, Brian. Yeah, I'm Brian Hansen. I'm the Langdon research agronomist and Randy Melhoff is our director here. And picture you see there is our office building where we have conference room holds about 125 people and we have a smaller conference room and where some of the staff are located. Langdon is kind of tucked in the northeast part of the state. And you generally consider this region be some of the cooler temperatures in the state, especially along these counties along here by the shortest growing season and cooler temperatures we do have the Red River Valley along here, which is a fair amount of difference even though it's close compared to where Langdon is located. And we're about 180 miles from the main campus and about 17 miles from the Canadian border. Now this aerial view of the station is back in 2014 so it's been a little well. This is our office building off to the lower corner here and that was built in 2004. And off to the right there we have a new agronomy lab that was built in 2014. And before we were housed over in this area so it was a tremendous upgrade when we got that. Our plant pathologists would like to see a greenhouse here sooner or later to help this work. And Langdon Research Station was established in 1909. And when it first started for many years we were located what they call the Durham Triangle and of course Durham has moved further west yet with some of the diseases we've had in our area. So that is not a focus at the time but it's still an area where a lot of companies or breeders come up to this area. We generally have like I said the shortest growing season but you also have a fair amount of diseases up in this area. So plant pathologist keeps busy with that. Now one of the smaller stations we only have 100 and or 755 acres and you see this is the original quarter that was established back in 1909. We have this land right here. Now Langdon is right to the bottom of the screen and this area we've we farmed since 1989 and actually was purchased a couple sessions ago and this is land we rent here. Langdon we do have a Langdon. There's a fair amount of saline sodic areas so a lot of it is not usable for what you call the the premier land for some some of the research. It's great for soil health specialists mentioned about a little bit. So a lot of this land gets used for some of our seed increase and we'll steal better pieces within the seed increase fields. You can see up in this area here our other areas will do some research during the growing season. Now we have really more four areas that we concentrate on here and one is plant pathology and that's headed up by Dr. Venkat Chopra and research specialist Amanda and they do done about 30 trials a year and some of the crops they work on. You can see their main ones have been over the years wheat, derm canola and soybeans and sunflower and this position was really established in the 1990s when the scab epidemic hit. We got funding in that time for a pathology position so a lot of work as I mentioned is scab and one of the bigger ones up in our area is is clobber. Northeast part of the state especially along the county line here we have some of the most canola grown in the state and in fact the our county which is Cavalier County is called the Canola Capital USA. We have about 250,000 acres of canola in our state or in the in our state. So with that comes diseases and Venkat's been working on blackleg and white mold but about five or six years ago clobber came into the picture. It's a disease that soil born stays in the soil up to 20 years so it's more of managing it rotations and variety selection and some other soil amendments you could apply to help reduce white mold so that's one of its main focused areas. Also it's looked at the some of the soybean work we found some death soybean in our county last year and the only other place in the state was Richland County way in the south so obviously between Richland County and Cavalier there's more of this disease that needs to be looked at and he's also looked at head rock with p-vectoring technology with a v the peas will come out of their hives and go through an area where there's a type of fungicide or something and when they go to pollinate the plants they'll be carrying that fungicide too with the plants. So these are just some of the different diseases he's looked at scab and then the clobbert which is a bigger one right now I can see how it disformed they are sun death syndrome soybeans we have the blackleg and the white mold and peas are becoming a more important crop here in the northeast part of the state. Another area we're looking at is soil health and that's run by Naeem Calawar and he's a hundred percent extension specialist so some these are some of the areas he looks at and probably the biggest ones are soil salinity and soil sodicity and also the excess water. So Naeem helps the the area farmer he's since 2012 he's worked with about 122 different farmers in the 14 county county region and beyond that at times and he's looking at the most severely unproductive area so when Naeem comes out and the soil sampling this is kind of the fields he's looking at where nothing grows you see the salty top and the soda conditions there so after he gets the soil samples back and the soil results he'll meet with a farmer and talk about how he can you know change that land to make it more productive whether it's just the grass or if there possibly could be some tiling and that's what he talks with a producer about some other areas we look at as I mentioned we have a lot of saline sodic and this is a trial that we did last year I cooperate with him just looking at the barley and oats and separate some of the different salinity of levels you see low on the top bar there have a mid-range salinity in the middle and then at the bottom we have very high salinity and actually did get a little bit oaked to grow in that area but nothing much this year and we're also going to cooperate with you and Kai on the campus looking at some wheat early wheat there are almost grass like weeds to help to identify some plants that may have more salt tolerance that we could put into a week another area he looks at is I'm tiling this is an area just on the west side of the station it was very saline for many years nothing grew there he started a tiling project in 2014 and you can see how it looks now in 2018 and each year he does take several readings in there looking at different soil chemical properties bulk densities water quality analysis and also groundwater depths every year foundation seed stocks I did mention where the smallest station for our acres goes with about 756 about 550 those are available for foundation seeds Jim Sheppey and Carmen Ewert man that part of the program we have about six different crops mostly wheat and different wheat varieties and we used to have a lot of canola between our wheat varieties to for cleaning the fields up but with club root and we do have club root on the station so we've had to manage that so we switch more to soybeans and also some of the pulse crops we've raised some peas and also some fava beans and not any other research sensors mentioned it yet but we're certainly appreciative of the least program we do have case IH every year we have an opportunity so we get new machinery sprayers maybe even some planting equipment every year so I run the ground me program and I have two research specialists that they're very helpful Lawrence Henry and jewel fall she just started the beginning of February and a lot like the other research centers do a lot of the work efforts are with with variety testing it's a very easily management practices that farmers can use to increase their yields and the rest involved in production management so these are some of the crops we look at hard as spring wheat right now fuel peas are kind of on the increase in our part of the world canals have been very important our area of the state since the mid 1990s and soybeans has increased and we start looking at hemp in 2015 we were the first RAC to have hemp and we were glad we were close to Canada I went up there and talked to people up there who knew how to do research on hemp so we've been working with that for past several years and we do work again with pre plant breeders Derm is not grown much in this area but they have a quite big nursery here a lot of that's for a disease so they can weed out some of the bad varieties we do a performance variety testing with the different companies every year we do have off station trials like a lot of the other research centers do and most of our off station work deals with variety testing hard as spring wheat and soybeans and some of the different environments that we have here in the northeast and we also do some other production work once in a while looking at a fiber bean study with risk management association and some of the other program is is grant funded working cooperation with other research centers as well dry beans rule spacing populations here we have a soybean planting date and hemp this with hemp we're working with the national crop insurance service develops some hail studies with them so they can use in their insurance program so we've worked with them we're in that for about three different years and i'd be remiss if i didn't mention our our secretary she has um sarah a greger she does a very fine job for us and keeps us in line other than that we have about 10 full-time staff and in summer we hire around 10 summer um employees to help manage all the work that we have here that's about all i have thank you brian and our final presentation is uh highlighting the heading to research extension center and i will be giving that presentation uh the heading to research extension center is located in southwest north dakota about four miles from south dakota and 80 from montana are about 350 miles from campus uh my name is chris shower i'm the director and i'm also one of the animal scientists here at the heading to research extension center we look at the infrastructure for the hrec uh we're founded in 1909 on 160 acres right now we own about 1200 acres uh that's contiguous right here in headinger we also rent about 3500 acres and some of that's in headinger and some of it's on state prison land in the bismarck mandan area uh we operate about a thousand head of use or lambing use so we also run about 500 head of yearling so about 1500 head of mature sheep at any given time on the research center that's the largest state-owned research flock in one location uh there's a couple federal flocks that are bigger one in dubois idaho and one in clay center nebraska um we have about 80 cows here at the heading to research extension center and i'll talk about their use a little bit they're they're used heavily in the wildlife program we also manage the livestock at the ars station in mandan and a specific cooperative agreement so technically we own 110 head of cows in mandan as well as approximately 20 head of goats we collaborate with them and i really won't highlight that today we have a 24 pin lambing barn uh so from a research standpoint we've got some unique opportunities to do research during lambing and before and after i also have an outdoor 24 pin feedlot uh depending on the season that holds about 192 calves or 960 lambs uh as doctor said of it kylei did we really do use a graduate student model especially in our wildlife range and livestock programming we do quite a bit of undergraduate training during the summer we have housing for around 20 students every year it is scattered across head anger but heading there's only a town of 1200 uh so it's not too far to get to to any of it some of it's on the research center and some of it's in a trailer park we annually train about five graduate students at any given time and then during the summer also those undergraduates from across the nation and some high school students so we're usually sleeping about 20 students in our housing units from across the nation uh as far as our conference rooms and office capability we have multiple conference rooms with appropriate technology especially after covid and carersack funds to integrate with campus very effectively being 350 miles from campus many of our graduate students spend part of the academic year out here and can integrate into the uh taking classes on campus through the technology that we have i am an animal scientist as well as a director we also have a livestock extension specialist dr jenna block uh three farm crew and two secretaries our wildlife and range program is led by dr ben gomot and he has a technician our agronomy program was led by john rickerson as the agronomist and he has a technician as well and dr kaleb dally uh is our head weed scientist with the technician of daniel abbey so going and looking at sheep research and outreach i don't have a formal extension appointment uh but i do quite a bit of sheep outreach in addition to my uh research appointment outreach wise uh we were on one of the nation's largest sharing and wool classing schools it's kind of the highlight of our fall in the sheep program uh we also run a beginner shepherd clinic in collaboration with north codle lamb wool producers and uh the sheep extension program in fargo and travis hoffman we do quite a bit of outreach one on one and sheep nutrition and reproduction as we don't have a formal sheep extension appointment out here a lot of this is working with uh larger producers or working with extension agents one on one on sheep nutrition reproduction questions uh one of the things that we do have is uh an o f d a or an optical fiber diameter and analyzer and this is for wool fiber analysis and this gives us a chance to to look out wool either from a research or from an outreach standpoint and determine the quality that will for that producer whether they're making purebred selection or whether they're doing their entire flock and and just getting a handle on what their wool is research wise i concentrate in nutrition and reproduction and management have quite done quite a bit of work with distiller's grains uh both in females and males looking at the effects of distiller's grains on reproduction uh we also do some research in wool and more recently we've been doing some work in animal welfare uh the use of analgesics during castration and docking and lambs uh dr jenna block uh provides the e for the heading to research extension center she is a livestock extension specialist uh with 100 extension appointment she works extensively with our county agents uh livestock producers and also the industry organizations i think she would tell you she spends most of her time one on one interaction and likes to work with our agents to be able to uh scale that her uh work out across the entire region if not the entire state her focus areas are supplementation and feed sampling and analysis body condition scoring to monitor nutrition analysis and ununderstanding the relationship between animal nutrition and reproduction she does oversee the nitrate quick test program for the state uh where she certifies the extension agents in doing nitrate quick tests for producers especially during periods of drought or early freezes looking at annual forages and nitrate concentration and also facilitates multi-state livestock mineral supplementation education program with south dakota and a little bit into montana she does do some demonstration applied research project she's the one that would utilize the calves in that uh feedlot during the fall she's looked at a couple different projects evaluating the interaction of injectable trace mineral and vaccination protocols on feed intake performance and immune response of calves as well as looking at some winter cow feeding strategies on cow performance offspring and carcass composition and meat quality the rangeland and wildlife program that is led by dr ben gomot looks at applied research and land use and ecological services striving to answer questions that can improve profit for landowners while maintaining or proving the ecological services provided by the land he utilizes both the cattle herd and the sheep flock in this program really concentrating on wildlife habitat for both game and non-game species more recently getting more involved with pollinator work in addition to owning their own hives and working with some of the local beekeepers looking at honeybee production on both native and domestic in both native and domesticated honeybees and also looking at grassland restoration in the upper right hand corner you can see utilizing controlled or prescribed fires to look at restoration of crp grasslands his program as i stated earlier works closely with scientists on campus and has a graduate student model to it and cheering them for jobs and resource management academia uh and also provides research experienced undergraduate students the agronomy program led by john rickardson uh is a class very classical program looking at variety trials and breeding nurseries on the right hand side you can see uh some of uh the work that's been done um from winter wheat and winter rye spring wheat and germ wheat all the way down to industrial hemp uh he works extensively with the wheat breeding program in fargo uh as well as all the breeding programs we're doing quite a bit of wheat breeding stuff right now not only does he have research plots and a variety of trial plots in head anger but also working with local agents in their counties with some remote plots he also works in applied agronomy looking at planting dates seeding dates seed treatments fertilizer fungicide biological treatments uh new and alternative crops such as hemp and rotational and system studies uh 45 acres on the station is dedicated to the research plots plus the other tracks locally if we need them and those off station plots are in scrant and regent and manned and as as you saw in the pictures a full complement of small plot research equipment the wheat control program led by a kid dr. Caleb dally uh concentrates on no-till crop production systems in southwest north dakota the major crops that he's worked with uh spring wheat canola sunflowers and some minor crops at the dry peas lentils chickpeas flax safflours and buckwheats uh as my not alluded to a lot of work in pre-emergent herbicides has been done at the head anger research extension center and reducing their alliance on post-emergent herbicides as well as looking at reducing early season competition from weeds we are probably the driest part of the state limited rainfall and that reduces the impact of pre-emergent herbicides so fall or early spring applications may be more effective in this region pre-emergent herbicides may also be tank mixed with post-emergent herbicides as some of the work that he's been doing for pre-plant weed control uh no-till requires use of non-selective herbicides to control the emergent weeds at planting and the timing of application can influence crop safety and reduce competition with the emerging crop he's also looked at post-harvest weed control uh looking at the control of annual weeds such as kosha uh and that may reduce weed seed production and variability uh with post harvest control and perennial weeds such as canadian thistle uh looking at work after harvest and that may impact spring planted broadleaf crops so some unique things looked at in southwest North Dakota based on the fact that we are so dry uh and we have to do some spring at different time periods so with that this uh slide kind of gives you a picture of our resources the bottom left hand corner is the 24 pan outdoor feedlot for both cattle and or sheep with graduate students in technician housing um upper left hand corner is our main office uh the center is our agronomy lab where we focus most of our research and especially winter work out of for both agronomy weeds and the range and wildlife program uh bottom right hand corner is just a really good picture of our our main facilities uh the director's house right there as well as the rest of the lambing facilities and then just to give you some context to how close we are uh to Headinger we start share a property line with Headinger both on the southern side and on our eastern side and then most of our acres uh spread out to the west we have the Headinger airport right here that we also rent and use for agronomy research projects