Twilight Tour
July 10, 2024
The public is invited to learn about the important agricultural research taking place at the University of Idaho’s Aberdeen Research and Extension Center while enjoying live music, games, prizes and free food.
The biennial Twilight Tour is scheduled for 5-8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 17, at the 440-acre Aberdeen Research and Extension Center, located at 1693 S, 2700 W. U of I has hosted Twilight Tours every other year in Aberdeen since 2007, except for during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Ultimately, the reason why we do research is to benefit society, and it gives us an opportunity in a family friendly environment for people to learn about what happens here and some of the impacts on agriculture and the public,” said Chad Jackson, the facility’s operation’s manager.
The Twilight Tour typically draws over 400 people from southern and eastern Idaho. Catered pulled pork meals will be served. The Lamb Weston fry truck will also be on hand to give away fried potato products. Guests may take horse-drawn wagon rides around the facility’s native plant plots. Door prizes will be awarded, and the first 150 children in attendance will receive squishy cows, celebrating the university’s forthcoming Idaho Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Idaho CAFE), which will include the nation’s largest research dairy in Rupert. Derek Tilley, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), will perform live music. Games, including a potato sack race and a strongman competition, are planned.
To showcase the research that takes place at the facility, UI Extension educators and other scientists will staff booths covering a variety of topics. Children will be given a passport to be stamped at each booth they visit. Agricultural technician Alan Malek and research specialist Katie Malek will host a demonstration showing how fungicides kill fungi growing on petri dishes. Wheat breeder Jianli Chen will showcase some of the high-yielding wheat varieties her program has developed for the region’s grain farmers, including the hard white spring wheat UI Gold. NRCS will bring its soil health demonstration trailer, which shows how topsoil squares cut from fields with living roots or reduced tillage are less prone to erosion.
Pam Hutchinson, potato cropping systems weed scientist, will offer samples of a side dish made from an edible weed found throughout the region — pickled purslane potato salad. She’ll also teach visitors to her booth how to identify two weeds that recently surfaced in Idaho that have resistance to common herbicides — Palmer amaranth and waterhemp. The weeds have become prevalent in the Magic and Treasure valleys, and the Idaho Potato Commission is funding an effort to search for the weeds in eastern Idaho.
USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, which operates the Small Grains and Potato Germplasm Research Center on the Aberdeen R & E Center campus, works closely with U of I on crop research, including breeding new potato and cereal varieties that are widely used in Idaho and elsewhere.
“People are amazed at this level of research that happens here in southeast Idaho and in Aberdeen,” Jackson said. “The Aberdeen R & E Center has been around since 1911 and we have done research on small grains and potatoes continuously since that time.”
About the University of Idaho
The University of Idaho, home of the Vandals, is Idaho’s land-grant, national research university. From its residential campus in Moscow, U of I serves the state of Idaho through educational centers in Boise, Coeur d’Alene and Idaho Falls, nine research and Extension centers, plus Extension offices in 42 counties. Home to nearly 11,000 students statewide, U of I is a leader in student-centered learning and excels at interdisciplinary research, service to businesses and communities, and in advancing diversity, citizenship and global outreach. U of I competes in the Big Sky and Western Athletic conferences. Learn more at uidaho.edu.