Undergraduate Students Compete and Win
2007-08-14

STILLWATER, Okla. – It may not have been as easy as one-two-three, but a trio of Oklahoma State University students finished first, second and third at the 2007 Southern Weed Society Collegiate Weed Undergraduate Contest Aug. 9 in Vero Beach, Fla. Josh Bushong, Amber Brewe and Cody Massey – all students in the OSU College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources – studied throughout the summer from approximately 5:45 a.m. to 8 a.m., Monday through Friday, to prepare for the competition. “The weather didn’t cooperate very well this year: The rain delayed us putting out our symptomology plots,” said Massey, a native of Weatherford and OSU senior majoring in animal science with a minor in rangeland management.

The 2007 OSU Weed Science Team: From left, Case Medlin, adviser, and students Josh Bushong, Amber Brewe and Cody Massey.

The herbicide identification and symptomology category is one of four parts that make up the competition. The three students had to employ their knowledge about such science-based aspects as herbicide chemistry and mode of action to identify 134 herbicides based solely on symptoms viewed on crops and weeds in plots.

“It’s very much a real-world, in-the-field challenge,” said Case Medlin, team adviser and Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service weed science specialist with the OSU department of plant and soil sciences.

Medlin said a major benefit of the contest is that it mirrors the job responsibilities of many career options relative to plant and soil sciences, from Cooperative Extension specialists and educators to weed and crop researchers, to agricultural sales representatives.

“I kept joking with them: Welcome to my world,” Medlin said. “Somebody’s livelihood depends on you making the right determination and recommendation. The contest is a challenging yet fun way to focus their skills, take it beyond a classroom environment.”

Massey, who placed third in the national contest, said the summer’s worth of study drove home the need to take into account the smallest details in the symptomology plots before making a decision.

But Massey’s fellow Weatherford native Bushong, an OSU plant and soil sciences senior who took top undergraduate honors at the competition, did not rate the symptomology section as the most challenging part of the contest.

“My biggest challenge was providing the common, genus and species names for 114 weeds,” Bushong said. “(Preparing for this part of the contest) was educational in a way that I had never seen before in a classroom. I had to dramatically improve my dedication and study, study, study.”

The third part of the contest – sprayer calibration, an in-depth written test that takes participants about an hour to complete – is so rigorous that it effectively “weeds out” contenders for top honors from the pretenders.

“It’s meant to be challenging,” Medlin said. “Sprayer calibration is important: Misapplication of herbicides can negatively affect both crops and their surrounding environment. Think of what an improperly calibrated sprayer can mean in places like Oklahoma, where the wind is almost always blowing.”

Finally, the contestants had to put all three components together to solve “the farmer problem.” Participants have 15 minutes in which they go into a field where the crop has been altered in some form or fashion. The students must use their knowledge of weeds, herbicides and general agronomic practices to figure out what was done and then make recommendations for the subsequent and following year to correct the problem.

“Traveling to Florida and competing helped me realize this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” Brewe said. “I was scared at first, all of us were, but we helped each other study and the professors in the department were always willing to lend a hand.”

An OSU plant and soil sciences junior from Marthasville, Mo., Brewe said the contest reinforced the idea that studying weed science provides a measure of job security.

“There are plants that are becoming more resistant to certain chemicals and people in agriculture who want solutions to their problems,” Brewe said. “In weed science, there are often combinations that may solve a problem and, with the right tools and mindset, you can find new solutions to old problems.”

Bushong, Brewe and Massey placing first, second and third in the competition made more than a few people stand up and notice.

“This was the first year that an undergraduate competition was held,” Medlin said. “In the past, the society only sponsored a graduate-level competition. Industry professionals and other universities looking to recruit top students to their graduate programs had their eyes focused on Oklahoma State in a big way.”

Still, it came as no surprise to Medlin, a Cowboy alumnus who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in what was then called the OSU department of agronomy, in 1994 and 1996, respectively.

“OSU has long been and continues to be one of the nation’s best breeding grounds for agronomists,” Medlin said. “There are a great many people in the industry who are either graduates of or who were taught by a graduate of our program.”