Mississippi Delta MSEA Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 3, First Semester 1998

REPORTER

Volume 4, Issue 1, Page 3, Fisrt Semester 1998

The MDMSEA video which has been two years in planning is now available and in use. Thanks are due to many people. In the planning phase, Richard Rebich and Jon Schreiber solicited the help of the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, while they were doing their flyover of the delta area, to film from the air MDMSEA?s three oxbow lake watersheds. Thanks to Roy Smith, Diane Miles, Phil Corley and Joe Hendrix. This was done with no cost to MDMSEA. Many sincere thanks to Mississippi Farm Bureau narrator, Greg Gipson and his staff, who spent many hours interviewing, filming, and putting together the video, also free of charge to MDMSEA. As a result we now have a first class video of the MDMSEA project. It is being shown to service clubs and has been sent to our congressional leaders and to the 14 different agencies involved in the project. If you would like a copy, please contact Frank Gwin, Jr., project coordinator.

Special thanks to Dr. Sandra Harpole (MSU) and the students and teachers of the STRIDE program(please see article in this newsletter). Numerous articles about their summer 1998 experiences in the MDMSEA project have appeared in local newspapers including: the Starkville Daily News, the Greenwood Commonwealth, and the Jackson Clarion Ledger.

In September 1998, the fall edition of the MAFES Research Highlights will feature a four-page article about the MDMSEA project.

Several tours have been conducted to acquaint individuals and groups with the details of the scientific research involved in this study.

Thanks to all the scientists and workers for the time you have given to help make all this public awareness possible.

Frank Gwin, Jr.
Project Coordinator MDMSEA
Deep Hollow Office
601-455-4552
Fax: 601-453-1278
Email: mdmsea@tecinfo.net

Cotton Yield Monitor Obtained for Deep Hollow

Thanks to a special allocation of funds by USDA-ARS Mid South Area Director Dr. Tom Army, a cotton yield monitor and GPS system was obtained and installed on the JD-9965 cotton picker owned by Phillip Barbour. Micro-Trak Systems, Inc., who have been in the grain yield monitor business for several years, manufacture this monitor. This will be the second year that Micro-Trak has been selling cotton yield monitors in the Delta. Their local representative is AIM (Agricultural Information Management), located in Glendora, MS (601-375-8925), who installed and calibrated the yield monitor on the cotton picker. As this is written, the cotton picker with the yield monitor is harvesting the cotton in the MDMSEA fields at Deep Hollow Lake. Phillip plans to use the yield monitor on all his fields.

The Micro-Trak cotton yield monitor works by measuring the amount of infrared light transmitted from emitters to detectors mounted on opposite sides the cotton picker shoots just below the point where they bend and seed cotton is blown into the basket. Readings are taken every two seconds as the picker moves through the field and are combined with location, heading, and speed information obtained from the GPS system and are stored on a computer card (PCMCIA) located in the cab. One card can hold 18 hours of picking data. At the end of each day, the card is exchanged with a blank card and returned to a computer where the information is backed up and analyzed.

Yield monitor technology is becoming commercially available and is a new BMP. The value of this technology to farmers will be evaluated when the pattern of yield variability is combined with other information obtained within the MDMSEA (distribution of soil, varying agronomic management practices, weed density, herbicide inputs, etc.). Increased knowledge will lead to new ideas about how to make use of it.

Seth Dabney
Research Agronomist
USDA-ARS-NSL
P. O. Box 1157
Oxford, MS 38655
601-232-2975
Fax: 601-232-2915
Email: dabney@sedlab.olemiss.edu