Tuesday, November 6, 2007
163-18

Alabama's Old Rotation: The World's Oldest, Continuous Cotton Experiment.

Charles Mitchell1, Dennis Delaney1, and Kipling Balkcom2. (1) Auburn University, Dept. of Agronomy & Soils, 201 Funchess Hall, Auburn University, AL 36849-5412, (2) USDA-ARS, USDA-ARS, 411 S Donahue Drive, Auburn, AL 36832

In the late 19th Century, most of the South was devoted to cotton production. Few soil amendments were used and crop rotation and soil conservation were unknown. A young professor at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Alabama (now Auburn University), J.F. Duggar, started an experiment near campus in 1896 to test his theory that “. . . Alabama Agriculture will come unto its own when its fields are green in winter.” Today, Professor Duggar's 13 plots on 1 acre (0.405 ha) of land continue to provide valuable information on practices for sustainable crop production in the South. Cotton is rotated with corn, small grains, winter legumes, and soybeans. Treatments with no rotation and no winter legumes produce about the same cotton yield as they did 110 years ago. Treatments using only winter legume N (e.g. crimson clover) produce almost as much as those receiving high N fertilization. Since 1997, the experiment has been managed using high residue and conservation tillage practices. In 2003, irrigation was installed on half of each plot. Impressive crop yields and soil property changes over the last 10 years will be presented. This experiment is on the National Register of Historical Places.