Kansas State University

We are excited to announce a new option, Precision Agriculture, has been approved by Kansas State University to the Agronomy major.

Students can now choose to enroll in the following options within Agronomy:

• Business and Industry
• Consulting and Production
• Plant Science and Biotechnology
• Precision Agriculture
• Range Management
• Soil and Environmental Science

This is the first new option added to the Agronomy curriculum in many years, and is in response to demand from employers and students, says Mickey Ransom, Agronomy Professor and Assistant Head for Teaching. Getting a new option added to a curriculum is a lengthy and detailed process within the university, but Ransom and Kim Kerschen, Agronomy Instructor and Academic Coordinator, felt strongly that the new option was needed.

“Industry came to us and said they were putting a lot of our recent graduates into precision agriculture work. They wanted to employ graduates who could take all the data being collected by new technology and make agronomic decisions based on that data,” Ransom says.

Until now, students in Agronomy could choose to take existing courses in precision agriculture, while selecting one of the other options within the Agronomy major. Students did not, however, have a way to promote themselves to prospective employers as having a focus and specialty in precision agriculture, Ransom explains.

Some of the courses at K-State and K-State Polytechnic directly related to the Precision Agriculture option within Agronomy include:

AGRON 202 Introduction to Precision Ag Software

AGRON 655 Site Specific Agriculture

ATM 450 Sensors and Controls for Agricultural and Biological Systems

ATM 550 Precision Agriculture Technologies

GEOG 508 Geographic Information Systems I

GEOG 605 Remote Sensing of the Environment

GEOG 608 Geographic Information Systems II

UAS 270 Introduction to Unmanned Aircraft Systems

UAS 373 Small Unmanned Aircraft Design and Construction for Non-Aviators

UAS 463 Introduction for Autopilots and Mission Planning for Non-Aviators

In Agronomy, AGRON 202 was offered for the first time in the Spring semester of 2017, taught by Ray Asebedo, Assistant Professor of Agronomy and Precision Agriculture Specialist. This course was developed to be an introduction to precision agriculture software for any undergraduate students interested in the subject. In its first year, 41 students were enrolled, which was the maximum capacity.

In this course, students learned about mobile, cloud, and desktop GIS software. Emphasis was placed on the basics of data collection, processing, and analytics for the generation of recommendation maps and output files for rate controllers that account for site-specific variation. The goal of this course was to build students to a level of proficiency with GIS software early in their precision agriculture training that would be continually built upon as they go through the precision agriculture program.

Asebedo found the students in AGRON 202 to be thoughtful and creative. They seemed to enjoy the course.

“Learning software is often a struggle for students and can seem a rather daunting task. Often, software courses try to cover too much material and students get lost in the process. Majority of students thought the course was intensive but were pleased at the end of semester as they could build fields, import data such SSURGO, satellite imagery, and drone imagery, and process them to recommendation maps that are high quality on their own,” Asebedo says.

“Many students started doing extra work and building maps for their home farms, and even creating their own logos to mark their work. It was definitely a fun time with these students. We had many late-night ArcMap map making parties. Precision agriculture is an interdisciplinary field requiring students to understand software and hardware as well as the agronomic sciences. Interdisciplinary training is what we seek to provide for generating the next wave of precision agronomists,” Asebedo says.

Overall, the new Precision Agriculture option within the Agronomy major adds visibility and marketability to our undergraduate program, Ransom says. It also helps in recruiting new students. Precision agriculture technology has created fundamental changes within agriculture, and once again K-State and the Department of Agronomy are leaders in the field.

Agronomy’s Crops Teams and Soil Judging Teams have enjoyed many years of competitive successes recently. Since October 2016, there have been another round of notable achievements by our students!

1. Crops Team Shares 2016 National Championship Title

The Kansas State University Crops Team completed the fall season by taking the top three individual placings to win the Chicago Collegiate Crops Contest by 104 points over Iowa State University. Earlier in the week, Iowa State edged the K-State team by six points in the Kansas City American Royal contest, resulting in a shared national championship for 2016.

This was the 8^th straight win for K-State in the Chicago contest, matching the record set by the University of Minnesota from 1969-1976. K-State teams have now won or shared the collegiate crops contest championship in 20 of the past 23 years.

Official members of the K-State team were agronomy majors Jessi Bramhall, Seneca, senior; Sarah Zerger, Cheney, junior; and Hayden Guetterman, Bucyrus, senior. Alternate contestants were sophomores Keren Dureksen, Newton, and Kaylin Fink, Chapman.

In both contests, the K-State team took first place in both the grain grading and the plant and seed identification phases of the contest, and placed second in seed analysis. At Chicago, each team member won one component, and a 1-2-3 finish in grain grading sealed the win for K-State.

Jessi Bramhall was the high individual overall and the high individual in seed analysis. Sarah Zerger took second overall and was the high individual in plant and seed identification with a perfect score, the first in since 1994 in the Chicago contest. Hayden Guetterman was third high individual, and won the grain grading section. Bramhall was second in identification and third in grain grading. Zerger placed second in grain grading while Guetterman placed fourth in seed analysis and fifth in identification.

At Kansas City, Jessi Bramhall was second overall, second in identification, third in seed analysis and fifth in grain grading. Sarah Zerger placed fourth overall, second in grain grading and fifth in seed analysis and identification. Hayden Guetterman was eighth overall and fourth in identification.

The team was coached by Kevin Donnelly, professor of agronomy. Assistant coaches were Nicole Sudbeck, agronomy junior from Seneca, and Samantha L’Ecuyer, agronomy senior from Morrowville.

2. Crops Team Wins Australian Universities Crops Competition

Five members of the Kansas State University Crops Team took first place in the Australian Universities Crops Competition. The event was hosted by the Australian Grain Growers organization and was held in Temora, New South Wales.

K-State Crops Team members making the trip included Samantha L’Ecuyer, Morrowville; Nicole Sudbeck, Seneca; Michaela Simmelink, Downs; Jessi Bramhall, Seneca; and Sarah Zerger, Cheney. The team was accompanied to Australia by coach Kevin Donnelly, professor of agronomy, and Kim Kerschen, academic coordinator in agronomy.

L’Ecuyer took second place overall individual in the contest. Bramhall was 6^th and Sudbeck placed 10^th overall individual.

The competition was held over two days at the Temora Agricultural Innovation Centre, managed by FarmLink. The contest included a seed identification section, three exams over production of selected Australian crops, commercial grading of wheat samples, a business management problem, field yield estimates and management recommendations, and a live crop, weed and disease evaluation component.

Before and after the competition, contestants also toured various research projects being conducted on site and at farms in the local area. Learning about canola and Australian white wheat production, ryegrass herbicide resistance problems, and the use of pulse crops such as lupins and fieldpeas in crop rotations were highlights for the U.S. teams.

The students also took the opportunity to learn more about Australia. The trip began with visits to popular sites in Sydney, followed by a trip to the Great Barrier Reef at Cairns. There they also visited the Atherton Tablelands region in Queensland to observe tropical agriculture including sugar cane production and a coffee plantation. On the trip to Temora, the group visited the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.

After the competition, they toured Charles Sturt University and the Rhizolysimeter Center at Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. The trip concluded with two farm visits in the Junee area featuring mixed cropping systems integrating wheat, canola and pulse crops with pasture crops supporting sheep production.

In addition to the grant funds from the American Society of Agronomy, the trip was sponsored by the K-State Department of Agronomy. The College of Agriculture also provided international travel scholarships to the Kansas State students.

3. Soil Judging Team Takes 2^nd in National Competition

K-State’s Soil Judging Team won 2nd place in the “Overall Team” and 2nd place in the “Group Judging” categories at the 2017 National Collegiate Soils Contest hosted by Northern Illinois University on April 23-28 in DeKalb, Ill.

Erin Bush, graduate student from Franklin, Ind., was 2^nd high individual. Chris Weber, junior from Hoxie, was 7th high individual.

Other team members include Keren Duerksen, sophomore, Newton; Jacob Reinecker, junior, Caldwell, Idaho; Logan Evers, junior, Great Bend; Tessa Zee, junior, Erie, Colo.; Tara Wilson, sophomore, Highland, Mich.; Peter Bergkamp, freshman, Garden Plain; Megan Owens, freshman, Harlan, Iowa; and Lucas Scott, freshman, Olathe.

Coach for the team is Mickey Ransom, professor of agronomy. The assistant coach is Kim Kerschen, agronomy instructor and academic coordinator.

The contest is an activity of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America. Twenty-four teams from all over the U.S. participated.

4. Soil Judging Team Takes Top Regional Honors

K-State’s Soil Judging Team won 1st place in the “Overall Team” and 2nd place in the “Group Judging” categories at the 2016 Region 5 Soil Judging Contest.

Erin Bush, senior from Franklin, Ind., was 2nd high individual, Jacob Reinecker, junior from, Caldwell, Ida., tied for 6^th, and Logan Evers, junior from Great Bend, tied for 10^th.

Other team members include: Jaret Kluender, senior, Perryville, Mo.; Benjamin Hamill, senior, Newton; Chris Weber, junior, Hoxie; Tessa Zee, junior, Erie, Colo.; Keren Duerksen, sophomore, Newton; Tara Wilson, sophomore, Highland, Mich.; Peter Bergkamp, freshman, Garden Plain; and Lucas Scott, freshman, Olathe.

The Soil Judging Team was coached by Mickey Ransom, professor of agronomy, and assistant coach, Kim Kerschen, instructor and academic coordinator in agronomy.

The contest is an activity of the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America.

AGRON 360, Crop Growth and Development, has been a core course for several of the curriculum options in the department for many years. This course was begun and taught by Dr. Gary Posler in the 1983, and has been taught since that time by Dr. John Fritz and Dr. Jim Shroyer. The course is currently taught by Dr. Kraig Roozeboom. It serves as an intermediate level course between introductory Crop Science and advanced-level crop science courses.

Historically Crop Growth and Development has been offered in a lecture format with three, 50-minute sessions each week. One of the recurring items of feedback from students taking the course is that they would like it to be more hands-on. To that end, we have brought in plant examples to pass around whenever possible, continued the traditional “Problem of the Day” started by Dr. Shroyer, and tried to make the case studies and reading assignments as practical as possible. Even so, one can do only so much with a class of 60 to 70 students in a 50-minute time slot.

Beginning in Fall 2018, the class format will be changed to two lectures and one, 2-hour lab each week. The lab sessions will be held at the Agronomy North Farm in plots of corn, sorghum, soybeans, sunflower, cotton planted in situations designed to illustrate the core concepts of the class, e.g. growth stages, yield components, yield losses, compensation, leaf area, light interception, metabolic processes, etc. Students will work in pairs or small groups to collect data or note symptoms on plants in the field so they can observe first-hand how genetics, environment, and management interact to affect plant response and ultimately crop yield.

The future Agronomy Education Center will be a huge asset for facilitating these lab sessions, especially later in the semester! During the summer of 2017, we are planting a practice run of the lab plots along Kimball Ave. That will be easy to see if you park at the North Farm for K-State Football games this fall. The goal of these changes to the course is to produce Agronomy graduates who are better equipped to step into a field and understand the implications of management decisions, environmental conditions, and their interactions from the cellular or sub-cellular level to the management zone or field level.