Song Cui

song.cui@mtsu.edu

Jessica Carter

School of Agriculture

Discipline specific equipment

Horse Science Center, SAG Soil Laboratory, and the Farm Laboratory

N/A

N/A

A squeeze chute, penning, and corral system will be used at the beef unit on the farm laboratory. The current system is in ill repair and cannot be economically rejuvenated. This is a safety issue for both students and cattle. This new system will improve animal welfare and will be used by all Animal Science majors (>300 students). An Arena Drag will be used to apply water and condition footing in the Horse Teaching Arena for classes, laboratories, and team practices. Depth and moisture of footing protects horses and riders from injury and reduces airborne dust particles, which is essential to human health. The Teaching Arena is used by 18 HORS courses and 3 nationally-titled horse competition teams totaling over 450 SCH and 300 student team hours annually. The current arena drag is 20+ years old. A PM20-1 Air Compressor and a Gasmet 4040x trace-gas analyzer (repair costs) purchased using external grant funds are essential equipment for measuring soil respiration and soil water retention in the laboratory setting. An LD350 laboratory thresher will be used for seed separation for field and forage crops. These three pieces of equipment will be used for conducting hand-on learning activities used by four Plant and Soil Science courses with more than 150 students enrolled annually. Finally, a Beckman Coulter Avanti JNX26 Centrifuge is requested for instruction in isolation and purification of cell culture and biomass of fermented products. The equipment will impact more than 90 Fermentation Science students per year.