September 17, 2007

By Jeannie Griffith

The New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) invited its friends and neighbors over for a celebration last weekend, and about 5,000 of them came—from down the street, from Washington, DC and Albany, and from at least as far away as West Virginia. The occasion was the 125^th anniversary of one of the leading agricultural experiment stations in the world, and people flocked to Cornell’s Geneva, New York campus to learn how crops are improved, plant pests outsmarted and new products developed from the resulting bounty.

Rob Way/NYSAES

Beth Gugino, left, a research associate for the Department of Plant Pathology, describes nematode damage on carrot roots to interested onlookers at the Sept. 15 open house at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) in Geneva.

“The experiment station was high-tech before there were the words ‘high-tech’,” said State Senator Michael Nozzolio ’73, MS ’77, one of a distinguished lineup of speakers that included Cornell president David J. Skorton, State Commissioner of Agriculture Patrick Hooker ’84, NYSAES director Thomas Burr, Dean Susan Henry of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, State Senator Catharine Young, and Geneva mayor Donald Cass. While all noted the experiment station’s leading role in advancing agricultural practice and economic development regionally and nationally, Hooker spoke of extending the model established there to help meet the worldwide agricultural needs of the next 125 years, saying, “We have to think about how to feed the billions of people in the world who live on less than $2 a day.”

Joe Ogrodnick/NYSAES

Mou Chen, left, a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Tony Shelton's entomology program, explains how biotechnology is being used to develop plants that are resistant to insects and diseases. The display was developed in cooperation with Marc Fuchs in plant pathology.

While the dignitaries addressed the crowd on the lawn of 150-year-old Parrott Hall, the rest of the 870-acre campus was abuzz with activity guided by 387 volunteer staff, faculty, graduate students, retirees and others, including 15 undergrad FFA members. Young children with painted faces and balloons tied to their wrists painted pumpkins, tossed rings over ears of corn, and lined up with their families to tour the live insect zoo. Across the way, metallic gold and silver chrysalises hung from wooden racks like earrings on display as more than 300 exotic butterflies on loan from Rochester’s Strong Museum fluttered about in a greenhouse filled with blooming plants.

The gene gun, developed at Geneva in the late 1980s, was on display, and the plant doctor was in as people lined up to find out what was plaguing their plants. The USDA-ARS facility on the campus had exhibits, too, including apple grafting, tomato pollen-crossing, and a do-it-yourself DNA extraction kit to take home and try on a banana.

Over at the food science and technology vinification and brewing lab, people with clothespins on their noses tried to taste wine. With noses unplugged, they were offered whiffs from squeeze bottles of Cayuga White wine—a variety developed at NYSAES—spiked with concentrated amounts of naturally occurring aroma compounds. The results earned descriptors like wet dog, bruised apples, rotten eggs and mouldy basement. Gavin Sacks ’99, MS ’01, PhD ’05, Cornell assistant professor of wine chemistry, explained that the taste of peas and asparagus results when ill-fated multicolored Asian ladybeetles get crushed along with the grapes at harvest time. “All of these compounds can actually be pleasant or interesting at the right levels and in the right wines,” he said. “At the wrong level, they can be disgusting.”

Rob Way/NYSAES

Ed Bailey, buildings and properties carpenter shop leader for NYSAES in Geneva, puts the finishing touches on directional street signs for the Sept. 15 open house.

Jerilyn Steele, a retired schoolteacher who lives up the road, was delighted to get the last seat on the “Botany of Desire” tour, one of five different tours offered at the open house. As she bounced along in the back of the bus, she explained that she had come 25 years earlier for the centennial open house, so she knew she didn’t want to miss this one. The bus unloaded at the experiment station’s McCarthy Farm, where wild apple trees grow from seeds that USDA horticulturist Phil Forsline, Cornell plant pathologist Herb Aldwinkle and others collected in the remote mountains of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, the likely Ur of appledom. The extra-hardy stock viewed on the tour represent six to eight million years of adaptation that will be put to use improving the world’s apples.

Back on the station’s main campus, Gemma Osborne, who coordinated the entire event, couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. “My favorite part of the day has been seeing the whole station come together and seeing staff that don’t normally work together interact for this event. It couldn’t be better,” she said, adding, “There’s a mystery about what goes on at the station in the public’s eye, and I think that’s why so many people came. They want to know more about what we do.”

It’s too bad they only do this every 25 years.