Bowling Green, Ky. -About a 100 students from a dozen universities will visit Western Kentucky University next week for the annual Southeast Regional Soil Judging Contest.

The event is scheduled Oct. 17-20 at the WKU farm off Nashville Road. Teams will practice for three days before the actual competition on Oct. 20.

In the contest, four-member teams judge four soil pits by looking for the physical description of the soil and taking texture, structure and color on those samples. “They determine what to call the horizons they see in the soil pits, look at interpretation for uses and then classify them based on the characteristics. Their main goal is to classify them into what would be called a soil order,” said Becky Gilfillen, associate professor in WKU’s Agriculture Department.

The top four teams and top five individuals will be recognized at an awards ceremony on Oct. 20.

Schools expected to compete include Virginia Tech, West Virginia, Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky, Murray State,  Tennessee, Tennessee-Martin, Tennessee Tech, Georgia, Auburn, Clemson and North Carolina State. WKU’s soil judging team is not eligible to compete since the University is hosting the event.

The contest is sanctioned with the American Society of Agronomy. Several employees from the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service have assisted with the preparation of the soil pits, Gilfillen said.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Becky Gilfillen at (270) 745-5970.

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