FEATURE STORY

Field Notes

Texas A&M Agrilife’s Overton Research Center delves into the science of agriculture

BY STELLA WIESER | swieser@panolawatchman.com PHOTOS BY MICHAEL CAVAZOS

The Texas A&M Agrilife Research and Extension Center in Overton is an exponential resource for East Texans.

There are 13 similar research centers across the state, said Dr. Charles Long, resident director of research and professor. "In the mid 1960s, if you looked across the state of Texas, you can see that (as) you go from east to west, rainfall declines, soil types change, and so the ecosystems change," Long said. "There's probably at least five major and maybe a dozen minor ecosystems in the state of Texas... if you're gonna serve the people of Texas, the thought was in the '60s to put centers with Ph.D.-trained research and extension faculty out in the state to do research and extension programming to meet the needs of the particular ecosystems."

The East Texas Center, as it was then called, was established in Overton because of local leaders and the Bruce McMillan Jr. Foundation, Long said. The foundation was established by W.P. Moore and named for his son, Bruce McMillan Jr., who died at the age of 8 from leukemia. "The Bruce McMillan Jr. Foundation has done a lot of good. Scholarships for people, support to different universities, to churches, to a lot of things," Long said. "They also helped make this center be here because we're sitting on 26 acres of land, which was donated jointly by the Bruce McMillan Jr. Foundation and the Montgomery Family. That shop just right south of here belonged to Jim Montgomery. He had two sons, and the younger son was Jack, he just passed away a few months ago. The older son died when he was a student at Texas A&M... so they donated part of this land in his memory."

The Foundation donated the 26 acres, plus funds to construct the main research building as well as equipment and a cow herd of 150. The building was dedicated in 1967.

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1. Cattle being studied at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. 2. Research Assistant Chloey Guy spends her morning working in the Animal Reproduction Lab at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. 3. A row of greenhouses at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. 4. Professor, TAMU Regents Fellow Forager Legume Breeding and Genetics, Gerald Smith in a greenhouse at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton. 5. Resident Director of Research Charles Long of the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Overton.

"We celebrated our 50 year anniversary in 2017, and during that period of time we have operated two farms that belong to the Bruce McMillan Jr. Foundation to do our research, and in 2016 we added a third farm to that," Long said. "So the land where we do our research programs belongs to the foundation, which is really really nice, and they have provided funding over time for a lot of different things."

The center has several different research programs. These include research on soil health, beef cattle physiology, forage production/stocking rates and legume plant breeding.

The center seeks to research that which is relevant to the area. "Horticulture is very important today," Long said. "It has changed a bit over time — years ago East Texas grew a lot of roses. Over time that has declined, and (now it is) bedding plants, woody ornamentals, vegetables and some fruit crop. So horticulture's important. Depending on the year, 20 to 25 percent of East Texas income comes from horticulture. Another major area is forage-based cattle or livestock systems. The bulk of that is beef cattle, but there's also some dairy and there's some evolving into some small ruminants... Poultry's very important, so is timber to a degree. We're at the western edge of the pine timber, but timber's important. The programs here, to the extent that we have funding, try to address those."

The center's forage production and grazing management research addresses both grazing of cows and calves along with yearlings, Long said. Beef production is broken into phases. "You've got the pure breeders over here that provide seed stock, but if you look in the commercial, you've got the cow/calf segment," he said. "Most of the time these people market their calves when they're weaned, and that goes into the stocker phase. And there's some people that all they do is run stockers, then after that traditional beef production is feedlot phase and a lot of feedlots are in Texas and Oklahoma and Nebraska and all that. There's reasons for the feedlots to be in the drier regions, because cattle do better under drier conditions in terms of feeding, but anyway, you may have a producer that has only 20 cows, and there's a lot of them. So hopefully some of the technology we produce will help them. In East Texas, there are some fairly large producers, but they can also utilize some of these things."

Reproductive physiology is an important research area. The profits of a beef cow/calf operation are very important, Long said, and very dependent on having as many cows raise a calf as possible. "If you've got a cow herd of 100 cows, during the breeding season you'd like to wean 100 calves,” Long said. “The really wellrun operations may wean 90. Some of the things that have been researched are the calf pregnancy losses between breeding and say two or three months because a lot of that happens. So some

of the research targets those kinds of things. If they can figure out what's causing the embryonic loss, then maybe we can come up with some sort of management technique, and that's the kind of stuff that will help anybody who has cattle."

There's a big focus on soil health and environmental quality too. That includes the nutrients in the soil: nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, as well as the micronutrients. "For example, aluminum in the soil is why you cannot grow some clovers and annuals unless you get the pH up, because at a low pH, the aluminum ties up micronutrients and the plant won't grow,” Long said. “But anyway, we have that (research program) going on right now. We have some chemists and microbiologists doing this; we have a plant breeder who does clover and rye grass varieties."

It's very important that any agricultural production be environmentally conscious, Long said. "The problem with soil health is not very well defined, so the guys who are doing research in soil health today are also coming up with the parameters to tell you what soil health is. And then greenhouse gas emissions are also important," he said. "So as we move ahead in some of these areas, simultaneously looking at environmental variables, along with production variables, is what we'll be doing, and that will be in general for agriculture. "

A plant breeder has turned out about 11 varieties of forage legumes over the last few years, Long said. "That's important because what those do, they provide a basis for producers to be able to meet their needs. For example, why is the legume important? Well, you can have a legume that, if you have the bacteria, can actually inoculate the roots — it'll take nitrogen out of the air rather than you having to put nitrogen fertilizer," he said. "A year ago, nitrogen fertilizer, let's just say either urea or ammonium nitrate, was ballpark $300 to $400 a ton. I bought some the other day for $750 a ton and thought it was a deal, and I can get you quotes for $1,000 a ton for those fertilizers right now. The other thing is, if a person is an organic producer... the organic ones are really, really strict. They cannot apply typical fertilizer, so they have to have plants. So they're a small portion, and they're generally small producers, but they still pay taxes in the state of Texas."

The research center's specialists do programs for different topics, training events and more, but the biggest event they have each year is the Horticulture Field Day, which is usually during the third week of June. In the past it has consisted of a morning visit to the fields and the greenhouses along with an afternoon program. In 2020 though, the field day was cancelled, and in 2021 it returned with a field only day in the morning. Long says it will likely be field only this year as well.

If you need assistance from the research center, the first thing you should do is check with your county extension agent, Long said. He called them “the first line of defense.” But the research center also works closely with the community to answer questions.