About Arkansas Valley Research Center

The facilities at the Center include an office-utility building, diagnostic laboratory, greenhouse, two adobe storage buildings, pole barn, pesticide storage and residence. It is situated two miles east of Rocky Ford on Highway 50 at an altitude of 4178′. Average annual precipitation (1901-1997) is 11.69 inches and the average frost free period is 158 days. The nearly level alluvial land has a silky clay loam soil, about 7.8 pH and 1.8% organic matter. Irrigation water is diverted from the Arkansas River through the Rocky Ford Ditch and distributed on the farm using furrow or flood methods.

The Center was established to serve the research needs of the irrigated farming area of southeast Colorado known as the Arkansas Valley, extending from Pueblo County on the west to the Kansas border. It also includes irrigated areas associated with the tributaries to the Arkansas River in El Paso, Huerfano and Las Animas counties. Agricultural production includes livestock and field and vegetable crops. Alfalfa, corn, dry beans, small grains, soybeans, sorghum, onions, melons, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes and peppers are representative of crops grown under irrigation.

An Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory is housed at the Center and administered by the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and serves Southern Colorado.

Leadership

The following individuals have supervised the operation of the Arkansas Valley Research Center at Rocky Ford since the initial date of September 17, 1888.

Three of these individuals, P.K. Blinn, Herman Fauber and Jerre Swink, provided the leadership for almost 75 years of the Center’s existence. This had the positive effect of providing stability and continuity of research for this Colorado Experiment Station facility.

*Justus Ward was hired in 1922 as a chemist and Frank Schweissing was hired in 1961 as entomologist. Robert Gardner, an agronomist based in Fort Collins, supervised an on-site employee to maintain Center operations from 1928 to 1932.

Research efforts, in the years between 1900 and 1932, were scaled back to accommodate reduced land area and the title of Superintendent was changed to Field Agent, with responsibility for working directly with growers to solve production problems. However, considerable research effort was continued on the Center and directed towards cantaloupe disease, alfalfa forage and seed production, sugar beet production and investigation into sod. In 1922 a soils laboratory was set up and a chemist hired to study the effect of soil nitrates on crop production. It was the contention of some that high soil nitrates were adversely affecting alfalfa seed production and purity of sugar in beet production. This study culminated in 1930. It was during the twenties that efforts to develop a better onion variety began. The cantaloupe industry started to decline and the onion began to take its place as the premier vegetable crop in the area.

Breeding projects, cultural practices and variety tests became the research focus in the years between 1930 and 1945. These included work on onions, tomatoes, sweet corn, soybeans, peas, spring and fall grains, hybrid corn and sorghum, small fruits and, as always, alfalfa. It was during this time the research effort began to seriously emphasize the management of pest problems in the various crops in the Valley. Bindweed had become a major pest and significant effort was directed towards this problem.

Due to increased crop losses caused by pests and increased labor costs, particularly related to weed control, the major part of the research effort between 1945 and the early 1980’s was directed towards managing the pest problems in crop production. In the late 1940’s a plant pathologist was hired at the University whose primary responsibility was to carry out research on the onion disease problems in the Arkansas Valley. In 1961 an entomologist was hired and assigned to the Center to work on insect problems of the Valley. These positions were instigated and supported by grower groups in the area.

The research outlined above continues to some extent in the present but emphasis during the last ten years has turned to production efficiency and environmental protection as evidenced by projects on tillage practices and fertilizer, irrigation and pest management. The 1991 addition of a vegetable crop scientist to the staff has enhanced this research.