NEW BUILDINGS PLANNED FOR DELTA CENTER

PORTAGEVILLE -- G.W. Rone Exhibit Hall will become a reality at the University of Missouri's Delta Center by January.

Construction of the 60-by-240-foot structure, which will be erected on the Lee Farm about seven miles southeast of Portageville, will get under way next month. Funding was approved more than a year ago.

The exhibit hall is one of two buildings to be constructed at the agriculture center. A 6,600-square-foot Telecommunication Community Resource Center will also be built.

"This will be a state-of-the-art facility to provide a video link to Southeast Missouri from the University of Missouri campus," said Joe Marks, information specialist for the university.

Grsundbreakings for the two buildings will be held Wednesday during the annual Delta Center Field Day. The groundbreakings and four agriculture crop tours will highlight the day.

The 37th annual field day will be dedicated to Roger Mitchell, dean of the University of Missouri College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources. Mitchell will retire next week. Mitchell has been a staunch supporter of Southeast Missouri agriculture and the Delta Center's research, extension and teaching efforts, said Jake Fisher, center superintendent.

The telecommunications center groundbreaking will be held at 8:30 a.m. The center will be a distance education facility and will be equipped with two-way interactive video linked to UM's Inter-campus Video Network. Construction of the center will start in January, with completion expected in time for next year's field day activities.

Groundbreaking for the exhibit hall will be held a noon at the Lee Farm. The hall will house field day exhibits and equipment used in Delta Center projects.

Rone's sons, Donald D. Rone Sr. and C.E. "Gene" Rone of Portageville, contributed $20,000 to the center to fund the construction. Additional funds came from an earlier donation by the late Mrs. Helen Mae Spiese, a Portageville schoolteacher who died in 1986.

More than 2,000 people are expected for field day. Activities include the traditional tours of cotton, soybean and weed-control plots. A new technology tour is in its second year.

University of Missouri Extension specialists and scientists from the Delta Center and the MU campus in Columbia will give reports.

Tour wagons will depart hourly from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The cotton tour will include reports on bronze wilt disease, defoliation timing, insect control and "COTMAN," a computer mapping program designed to tell growers when to terminate insect control.

The soybean tour will include field demonstrations and will cover Roundup ready soybeans, new soybean varieties, the impact of no-till farming on disease, and preserving identity of special soybeans during marketing.

The new-technology tour will include reports on irrigation, fertigation and variable rate nitrogen applications.

The weed tour will include reports on no-till for the Delta flatlands, Roundup ready soybean issues, herbicides for Roundup ready cotton, and weed-control updates.

The Delta Center Field Day is the second big field day in Southeast Missouri this month. Missouri Rice Field Day was held recently at the Rice Research Farm near Glennonville. Rice acreage in Southeast Missouri is up 25 percent his year, said Bruce Beck, UM extension rice specialist for Southeast Missouri.