6/27/2011

Cullars Rotation Marks 100 Years of Research

AUBURN, Ala.—Auburn University’s Cullars Rotation, the South’s oldest continuous soil-fertility experiment and the second oldest cotton experiment in the world, is a century old this year and still generating data to document the impact that fertilization and soil nutrient deficiencies have on nonirrigated crop yields over the long haul.

The Cullars Rotation is named for Lee County farmer J.A. Cullars, who in 1911 allowed Alabama Ag Experiment Station scientists to initiate cotton fertility experiments on his property. Today, the experiment, a three-year rotation of cotton, corn, soybeans, clover and wheat, also is a field lab for students studying crop nutrient deficiencies.

Both the Cullars Rotation and Auburn’s Old Rotation—which, by the way, is the world’s oldest cotton study—are on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Cullars Rotation is located on Woodfield Drive, behind the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Art. The museum was built in 2000, but the now-100-year-old Cullars Rotation, with a 40-foot border on all sides, was preserved for ongoing research and demonstration on sustainable crop production for soils of the southern U.S. The experiment occupies about 3.5 acres.

More about the Cullars Rotation and the research there is available online in a new publication by Auburn agronomy and soils professor Charles Mitchell, affiliate assistant professor Kip Balkcom and Extension specialist Dennis Delaney. Find it at http://www.aaes.auburn.edu/comm/pubs/bulletins/bull676.pdf.

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