News Detail
Flooding doesn't faze USDA research workers
7/1/2008 1:39:21 PM
By Bob Zientara
Ames Tribune
While farmers across Iowa tally up the flood damage to their crops in terms of thousands of acres and billions of dollars, they're taking it two acres at a time on the test plots at the USDA Agricultural Research Service test plots in Ames.
"We're better off here because we're on higher ground," said Trent Moore, who led a team of workers up and down dozens of rows of crops tagged with labels that read "zea mays," the scientific genus and species titles for "corn."
Moore, wearing a straw hat, turned west and gestured toward the cluster of apartment buildings on Mortensen Road, just south of Ames Middle School.
"There were some washouts in that direction, but the whole farm is tiled, so we did OK here, for the most part," he said.
Moore and his team are charged with the task of looking after the wide variety of corn crops growing on the test plots. Armed with hoes and long-handled garden spades, the workers cultivated and dug out weeds along the rows.
"We're growing crops for a (USDA North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station) seed bank," said Moore, a native of Niantic, Ill.
He pointed to a tagged stalk (about knee high, just about right for the time of the season) growing at the beginning of a row.
"This is a variety that is grown in Argentina," Moore said. "It's not as suited to the climate and conditions as some of the other (corn) here, but we're trying for as many varieties as possible."
Once harvested, the test crops are stored in a seed bank "cold room" nearby. The station uses the corn varieties to fill requests from researchers around the world.
"We ship them out 200 kernels at a time," he said.
With much of the Iowa State University campus deserted for the summer, the students in the cultivating team are a bit of a rarity.
"But these are good summer jobs, so some of them stay," Moore said.
Moore said about half the student workers are part of the ISU College of Agriculture, including Audri Weaver, working her way down a nearby row.
"But I also work for USDA year round," she said. "In the winter, I'm in the lab scanning and cataloging the corn varieties."
Weaver, of Las Vegas, said she's an "Army brat" whose family moved to Iowa, "so I can get in-state tuition here."
