Students were able to learn more about where their food comes from during a tour of the Bradford Research and Extension Center on Saturday, Bradford Research Farm Superintendent Tim Reinbott said.
“It (the tour) is important to help students and the community to understand where their food comes from and how our researches are continuing,” Reinbott said.
Graduate student Tianyu Liu said she really enjoyed the tour, especially aspects such as the gene zoo. The zoo shows the ancestors of corn and soybeans, as well as different maturities and single gene mutations, according to the [Bradford Research Farm website](http://aes.missouri.edu/bradford/education/gene-zoo/gene-zoo.php).
“I like that we can learn about modern agriculture (on the tour) like the traditional wild plants and farm plants, and the differences between them,” Liu said. “The purpose of the gene transformation is to create the products we want and increase the yield of the products, but the bad thing is that it may lose the original genes variety.”
Students were also able to tour the biofuel garden, which consists of rows of crops that are grown to produce ethanol from stored seed sugars, according to [its website](http://aes.missouri.edu/bradford/education/biofuel-garden.php). The biodiesel can be produced from high oil content crops such as soybeans, sunflowers, canola and peanuts.
Last November, Bradford Research Farm partnered with Campus Dining Services to start the Zero Carbon Footprint Vegetable and Compost Production System. The first of its kind, the closed-loop system takes food waste from CDS, mixes it with manure and sawdust and then uses the compost to grow vegetables that will be sold back to CDS, according to [a previous Maneater article](https://www.themaneater.com/stories/2011/11/29/cds-and-bradford-farms-start-new-composting-system/).
Students were able to visit the year-old compost system, which Liu said was a significant part of the tour.
“The dining halls produce a lot of food, but most of the food is wasted by students,” Liu said. “We can use (the leftovers) in the landfill to make it fertile. It’s a cycle.”
The tour offered a vivid way to advertise how MU students do research and how the research can be applied to parts of daily life such as campus dining, Iowa State University doctoral student Yang Li said.
The value of the farm tour lies in not only guiding people to see the new research and fresh plants, but also leading people to think more deeply about the value and application of agriculture, Reinbott said.
“The most important things we can get from this tour are how agriculture can improve our environment and lives and how we can continue trying to improve the quality of our food sources,” Reinbott said.
