Ag News and Views: July 2007

There are many good methods for calibration, but they all have the same purpose - to determine the volume or gallons per acre a sprayer is applying. Without knowing the volume applied, we cannot know how much chemical to add to the tank to control the target weed or insect and stay within legal rate limits.

Graduate students are able to closely interact with both Noble Research Institute personnel and producers working with our consultation teams. Their research is dedicated to addressing production, economic or quality-of-life issues that are vital to our mission.

We often recommend prescribed burning as a method to manage native rangeland and wildlife habitat - and, indeed, many of us believe that fire should be considered an integral component to most rangeland management systems. With all of the touted benefits of prescribed burning, however, we often do not associate costs with the use of fire.

The Noble Research Institute's popular Permanent Raised Bed Gardening publication, first published in 1997, has undergone an extensive revision and is now accessible on the Noble Research Institute Web site.

Slow seedling establishment has previously limited adoption of switchgrass in forage production. Presently, scientists in the Noble Research Institute's Agricultural and Forage Improvement divisions are researching ways to improve switchgrass establishment.

For cattle producers, value of gain is the net value after the price slide of light to heavy cattle has been calculated.