ARS Scientist Wins Award for Soybean
Production Research By
Jim Core
February
13, 2002
BELTSVILLE, Md., Feb. 13, 2002—Larry G. Heatherly, a
research agronomist with the Agricultural
Research Service at Stoneville, Miss., has won an ARS technology transfer
award for developing and adopting the Early Soybean Production System (ESPS)
for a large part of the southern United States. ARS is the chief scientific
research agency of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.
Heatherly, with the ARS
Crop Genetics and
Production Research Unit at Stoneville, will be honored today during a 1
p.m. ceremony at the agency’s Henry A.
Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
ESPS is a new production concept designed to reduce exposure to
the yield-limiting effects of drought that occurs during normal growing
seasons. It requires using the stale seedbed planting system developed by
Heatherly. ESPS is now used on about one-third of the 8 million soybean acres
in the lower Mississippi River Valley. During the past five years, use of ESPS
has resulted in increased soybean income of more than $75 million per year in a
six-state area.
The ESPS was the only production system that resulted in a
profit from dryland soybean production during the devastating July and August
droughts of 1999 and 2000.
“Dr. Heatherly personally promoted this new concept by
advising and working directly with producers who made large-scale ESPS
plantings, by conducting economic analyses to show consistently greater
profits, and by transferring this new technology through popular press
articles, electronic media presentations and personal appearances on radio and
television programs,” said Edward B. Knipling, ARS acting administrator.
Heatherly summarized this work in a book he co-edited entitled
“Soybean Production in the Midsouth.” Heatherly also highlights the
positive effects of the concept in a monthly column he writes entitled
“The Delta Soybean Scene” for the Delta Business Journal. He
is the author or coauthor of more than 100 publications.
A native of Union City, Tenn., Heatherly received a B.S. in
general agriculture from the University of
Tennessee at Martin in 1968. He received an M.S. in agronomy from the
University of Tennessee in Knoxville in 1972
and a Ph.D. in agronomy from the University
of Missouri at Columbia in 1975. Heatherly is a U.S. Army veteran of the
Vietnam War. He has been with ARS since 1975. |
Printable version
Email this page
