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.
