URBANA – As thousands of freshmen moved into their dorms Thursday, hundreds of farmers and agricultural industry representatives boarded wagons and toured parts south of campus for the University of Illinois tradition of Agronomy Day.

Topics such as burning switchgrass pellets for home furnaces, controlling Japanese beetles, achieving 300 bushels of corn per acre, managing rootworms and more were on the agenda as professors and graduate students discussed their recent research projects in the corn and soybean fields of the Crop Sciences Research and Education Center, or as it's known by its informal name, the South Farms.

"This is the heart and soul of a land-grant institution," said new UI President Michael Hogan, who stopped by the event after greeting students at the residence halls.

As a youth growing up in Iowa, Hogan detasseled corn and walked among rows of soybeans yanking out weeds. He did not grow up on a farm, he told the group, but many of his childhood memories involve visiting and working on farms near Waterloo, Iowa.

Hogan went on to praise the university and its College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, which has hosted the annual event now for 54 years.

"This is clearly the finest land-grant institution" and "the best agriculture school in the United States," he said to much applause from the crowd, many of whom were enjoying a lunch of pork sandwiches and baked beans.

Interim Chancellor Bob Easter, whose background is in swine nutrition, echoed Hogan's remarks and said what a land-grant university should be doing, in addition to educating students and being involved in research and scholarship, is "contributing in a relevant way to the needs of the state."

Among the many presentations to visitors on Thursday, Professor Fred Below spoke about the "seven wonders of the corn yield world" and his experiments with research assistant Adam Henninger on how farmers can reach top corn yields. For example, the weather "wonder" can boost yield by 70 bushels, but it's the one component farmers cannot control.

He and Henninger recently developed what they called a "high-tech package" of five different practices and inputs and compared them with a traditional management system. That high-tech package included boosting soil fertility, using triple or "smart-stack" hybrid seeds, such as ones that are resistant to certain pests, applying extra nitrogen at certain times, using higher plant populations from 32,000 plants per acre to 45,000, and applying a fungicide.

"High-tech's not cheap," Below said.

The Champaign plot with the high-tech management strategy yielded 274 bushels per acre compared with a traditional plot of 208 bushels per acre.

Their research showed one single factor cannot guarantee big yields, but the interaction of them can help farmers reach that 300 level.

Increasing plant populations can help high yield, "but it must be managed," Below said. One of the many questions they will continue to explore: "Are twin rows a way to enhance yields by managing an increase in plant population?"

In other presentations to visitors, UI Professor Xinlei Wang spoke about his research in biomass gasification. He is exploring the possibility that farmers might one day be able to run their vehicles with fuel manufactured from wood chips or various agricultural waste. Jay Solomon, a UI Extension educator, spoke about his research on how farmers or landowners might not only grow perennial crops such as miscanthus and switchgrass but produce the pellets or briquettes used to heat homes or help fuel power stations.