OSU New Frontiers Landscape to Be Sustainable and Efficient

Feb 01, 2024

While the corner of Farm Road and Monroe Street on the Oklahoma State University campus may currently be an active construction site for the new home of OSU Agriculture, OSU Landscape Services has plans to transform the area into a beautiful and educational landscape environment.

Nick Ouellette, university landscape design manager, said each project on campus starts with an analysis of the existing site location and studying interactions the location has throughout campus. The survey helps determine needs and factors to consider during the design process.

“The OSU landscape master plan assists in driving all components and plans on campus,” Ouellette said. “Design standards were developed with input from students, faculty and staff to enrich creative learning opportunities and social interactions throughout the campus landscape. Landscape Services strives to accentuate our Neo-Georgian architecture while creating a safe, accessible campus for all to enjoy.”

The main entrance of New Frontiers Agricultural Hall, which will house the Ferguson College of Agriculture, OSU Ag Research and OSU Extension, will consist of landscape material and features that complement the existing landscape plantings and design standards along Monroe Street.

Exterior spaces planned for events and social gatherings will utilize Tahoma 31 turfgrass, which was developed by OSU scientists and is known for its features of exceptional freeze tolerance and improved water use efficiency. Landscape Services plans to consult and gather feedback from OSU turfgrass scientists during the design phase.

Other areas of the New Frontiers landscape plan will feature native plantings and an emphasis on selecting and purchasing local materials. Additionally, landscape plantings along the east end of the building will assist in controlling water runoff, and a portion of the garden will function as a rain garden.

Ouellette said soil reconstruction efforts are also vital during the design and installation phase of OSU landscape projects. Construction sites require compacted soil bases for infrastructure, and Landscape Services will develop soil reconstruction plans for each green space during the design period.

“This plan will undergo a series of processes to de-compact and recreate optimal growing conditions to support the landscape plan,” he said. “These processes depend on many design factors but typically involve fracturing and amending existing soil conditions, which often improve soil aeration, drainage, and fertility and allow the landscape to develop as intended.”

Randy Raper, OSU Agriculture assistant vice president of facilities, oversees the New Frontiers construction project and has worked closely with Ouellette and Landscape Services during the design process.

“Nick and his team have created a beautiful landscape design that will highlight the architecture of New Frontiers and the grand entrance on the west side of the building,” Raper said. “Equally impressive is the plaza-like atmosphere they have created on the east side between New Frontiers and the Noble Research Center that will complement both buildings.”

OSU students also assisted with the design layout and final renderings of the New Frontiers landscape plans, Ouellette said.

“Our design team was involved in many landscape architecture class projects that took place during the design development process,” he said. “Landscape Services designs campus green spaces to be sustainable and efficient. A design is only successful if it is maintainable.”

Landscape Services oversees the campus sustainability initiative, which strives to minimize OSU’s environmental footprint.

“The New Frontiers landscape plan captures some difficult-to-maintain locations with proven planting selections and groundcovers, such as gravel and mulch, that will create a clean, safe and maintenance-friendly landscape,” Ouellette said.

Source : okstate.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”