Photo above: Rebecca Stup (far right in hat with microphone), graduate student in the DiTommaso Lab, discusses her research on the benefits of planting pollinator-friendly strips in field margins.
Nearly 200 farmers, educators, industry representatives, faculty, staff and students attended the 2025 Aurora Farm Field Day at Cornell’s Musgrave Research Farm in Aurora, N.Y. on July 24.
The annual event focuses on grain and forage cropping systems, and features walking and hay wagon tours to view and learn about of the latest Cornell research directly from the experts who conduct the studies.
This year’s highlights included:
- Smart farming – Cornell’s Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems is developing technologies that allow plants to signal water and nutrient stress through advanced sensor and data systems.
- Pollinator strips – Researchers are investigating how strategic management of field margins can support pollinators and beneficial insects while balancing weed pressure.
- Precision nitrogen management – Imaging technologies and crop models help growers improve nitrogen use efficiency, reducing loss to the environment and supporting more sustainable crop production.
- Soil health on solar farms – Researchers are assessing how solar installations affect soil health and water dynamics.
- Integrated weed management – Research is looking at using multiple modes of action to cope with – and prevent – herbicide-resistant weeds.
- Living mulches and reduced tillage corn – Experiments designed to reduce soil degradation by strip-tilling or roller-crimping legume cover crops ahead of corn planting.
Other tour stops featured the New York On-Farm Research Partnership, the Farmers DataLab on-farm experiment project, and a Department of Entomology study on how cover crops, manure and seed treatments might prevent early-season corn pests after neonicotinoid insecticides are no longer available in New York starting in 2029.
The field day was organized by faculty and staff in the School of Integrative Plant Science’s Soil and Crop Sciences Section and the Field Crops Program Work Team, and was also part of the 2025 New York Soil Health and Climate Resiliency Field Days series. Cornell AES manages the Musgrave Research Farm and eight other Cornell research farms across New York State as well as 127,000 square feet of greenhouses and other agricultural research facilities.
