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September 4, 1998

Farm show gives Purdue a chance to show off

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Purdue University displays at the 1998 Farm Progress Show will represent many areas of agriculture and natural resources, as well as consumer and family sciences. Exhibits and demonstrations will show the traditional, along with the cutting edge, according to the specialists who developed them.

This year, the Farm Progress Show will be Tuesday, Sept. 29, through Thursday, Oct. 1, near Tipton. An estimated 300,000 to 350,000 people will visit the displays, which will open at 8 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. Purdue will have five tents at the northeast corner of the 80-acre "tent city" and demonstration plots northeast of the tents. In addition, there will be tours of a woodland adjacent to the show site.

From something as traditionally agricultural as hatching chicks to something as technologically advanced as microchip identification tags, the Purdue Animal Agriculture Tent will showcase displays from the departments of Animal Sciences, 4-H and Youth Development, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, the Animal Disease and Diagnostic Laboratory, and the School of Veterinary Medicine. Other animal ag displays will include tanks of indigenous fish and zebra mussels, a ventilation and odor control demonstration model, and ultrasound monitoring of the reproductive process.

"Charles Lindy of WILL Radio 580 will moderate agricultural outlook panels in the Presentation Tent," said Dana Neary, events coordinator for the Purdue Cooperative Extension Service. "There also will be demonstrations of geo-referenced field data used for agronomic decision making and of crop management tools on CD-ROM."

Another tent, called the Purdue in Action Tent, will host Purdue students and faculty representing nearly every department in the ag school, as well as the School of Consumer and Family Sciences, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the Office of Admissions, and Academic Programs in Agriculture. They'll be available to answer questions about fields of study at Purdue and career options in those fields. Neary said some booths will show videos; others will have materials to give away.

Two other Purdue display tents will house exhibits on food safety, home security, financial management, biotechnology, plant health, nutrition, land use, accessibility on the farm, and Integrated Pest Management, along with many other topics.

The Purdue Agricultural Alumni Association will sell Purdue items from a courtyard between the two display tents. The association also will offer free popcorn, games and activities.

"They're having a basketball goal where you can shoot baskets to win a Purdue cup," Neary said.

A selected group of soybean varieties with and without resistance to soybean cyst nematode in the Purdue plots will allow visitors to observe the reaction of these varieties to the pest, see the soybean cyst nematode and discuss management practices to minimize the problem. Another plot will share data summarized from tillage experiments from five locations over the last 24 years. Weed boxes will illustrate how Canada thistle and quackgrass persist in farmers' fields.

Across from the Purdue plots, antique farm equipment demonstrations will take place throughout the show.

The "Wildlands" is a demonstration area adjacent to tent city featuring a typical farm woodlot and grassed streamside buffer. Wagons leaving from the northeast corner of the grounds will transport visitors to the woodlot. Once there, according to Bill Hoover, Extension coordinator in forestry and natural resources at Purdue, visitors can see displays dealing with traditional forestry and wildlife activities such as tree planting, woodlot management, timber sales and wildlife habitat improvement. In addition, he said, there will be information on the environmental role of wildlands and the use of these lands to buffer the environmental impacts of crop and livestock activities.

More information on Purdue's presence at the Farm Progress Show is available at the following on their World Wide Web site.

Admission to the show is $5 per person, with people under the age of 18 admitted free. Organized by Farm Progress Cos., the show rotates among Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.

Source: Dana Neary, (765) 494-9113; e-mail, dn@aes.purdue.edu

Writer: Andrea McCann, (765) 494-8406; e-mail, mccann@aes.purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu


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