“Experimental Field” of ASU – for Agrarians & not Only for Them

Astrakhan State University has started developing 82 hectares of uncultivated land located in the village of Nachalo about 10 miles from the city of Astrakhan.

Upon Rector’s Initiative

The project “Experimental Field” initiated by Professor Alexander Lunyov, Rector of ASU, aims to become a demonstration site for new agricultural engineering technologies and solutions suggested by the faculty and research staff of our University. “Before he appointed me Acting Dean of the Agrarian Department, Rector set us a task of primary importance: to analyze opportunities and options of efficient application of material resources of our Department; first of all, he implied land resources”, Prof. Ravil Arykbaev explains. “We’ve been working for several months already, and so we’ve determined the precise goal and the main tasks of this project”.

As planned, the land that our University possesses will be divided into several sectors, each of which will be used to cultivate a particular agricultural crop. As for tillage and irrigation, Prof. Arykbaev remarks, both traditional methods and the No-Till adaptive landscape farming technology will be applied. The latter technology, which implies a “zero” soil plow, means that land is not plowed up once again and again; its fertile layer is preserved, while irrigation and planting are executed pointwise.

 

Period of Real Actions

Now this project has reached its active phase. “We’re aware of what to do and how to do. Our initial step will be introduction of watering systems, installation of hedges, and arrangement of guard. It may seem it’s easy to do all that, but we can’t go on, if we don’t do that first. At the same time, we determine themes of practical and lab workshops that our students will have to do by training in this land area. That’ll concern both Agronomy itself and adjacent fields: Biochemistry, Soil Science, Biology, and so on. This site of land will be beneficial not only for our Agrarian Department in particular, but also for our University in general”, Prof. Arykbaev points out. He is also planning to organize public defenses of bachelor, master, and PhD thesis written by our students after undertaking a research at the new land site.

 

There Are Some Issues, but They Shall Be Resolved

According to Mr. Alexander Kondratyev, our Vice Rector for Administrative Affairs and Capital Construction, this land area must be developed by applying the material base and the human resources of our University efficiently. That is why it is necessary to determine a technique to implement this process, i.e. to form a stage-by-stage map, to undertake a comparative material analysis of suggestions related to their practical application, and to find ways to tackle interfunctional tasks by identifying their activity phases. “Our top-priority processes are organization of water and power supply”, Mr. Kondratyev remarks. “First, we need to determine the volume of water intake, as that’s related directly to capacity of the pumping equipment that we’ll need to water the land. Secondly, we need to calculate the necessary rate of power consumption: our preliminary calculations reveal we need 40 to 100 kW. Then we have to agree technical conditions to provide power supply for our power consuming and water intake equipment with the power distributing company and with the Nachalo village administration. In the short-term run, we’re planning to hold meetings with reps of those institutions, as well as with farmers who are experienced in this field. And only after we’ve settled all that down, we can determine the preliminary cost of this project”.

The Vice Rector is sure that strategic planning skills and hard persistent work to be done by several units of ASU can contribute to resolution of the set issues.

So far, there is no precise forecast concerning the final stage of this project. However, both its organizers and developers strive to obtain a new experimental site for our University not later than the end of this year.

Russian original information and photo source: T.Yu. Gavrilkina (the University Web Resources Information Support Laboratory of ASU)