Griffin Campus

The Griffin Campus (Georgia Experiment Station) enjoys the serenity and quiet of a rural research institute. The 1300+ acre Campus, located approximately 40 miles south of Atlanta, is the oldest of three experiment stations. It was founded in 1888 by the Georgia General Assembly under the Hatch Act. The campus has an abundance of indoor and outdoor laboratories for faculty in 7 departments to conduct basic and applied research and to train graduate students. The campus maintains a University of Georgia Branch library that houses 32,400 volumes of scientific journals. The campus just recently completed construction of a controlled environment facility for conducting plant ecology and physiology research under closely controlled environmental conditions. This one+ million dollar facility is one of the finest controlled-environment facilities in the nation.

The research goals of the Crop and Soil Sciences faculty located at this campus involve the improvement of the welfare of Georgia's citizens through problem-oriented and fundamental research programs directed primarily to the Piedmont area of the State. The strength of the research programs at this campus results from the high quality facilities and support staff. Major research programs include feed grain production, turfgrass production and management, and emerging crops development. Georgia's nationally recognized variety testing program is centered out of this campus. This program was developed to assist the Georgia farmers in selecting the best cultivars to plant. The feed grain production program includes strong cultivar development and crop management research. This strong interdisciplinary research and extension program is recognized nationally.

The campus location, in the shadows of expanding metropolitan Atlanta, has fostered the development of the Center of Urban Agriculture. Faculty in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences have developed one of the foremost turfgrass research and extension teams in the United States. The interdisciplinary team develop and transfer basic and applied research information necessary for environmentally sound turfgrass management. Cultivar and germplasm development is a strong component of this program. Department faculty at this campus recognized the importance of identifying the impact of crop management systems on the environment. Research is conducted on the fate of pesticides following application to turfgrass and movement of organic compounds in the atmosphere. Although the faculty at this campus are heavily involved in research, they are often called upon to participate in the teaching function at the Athens campus through offering courses and participating in team-taught courses which can be facilitated by distance-learning technology (Tandberg). The Griffin Campus Crop and Soil Sciences is also home to the Biometeorology Program, also called the Lab for Environmental Physics. In that program, scientists, post docs and students study the interaction between our atmosphere and climate and the vegetation and soils. It is a pluridisciplinary program grounded in a combination of field measurements and atmospheric modeling.

Follow these links to find out more about the programs at the Griffin Campus:

• Lab for Environmental Physics
• Crop Variety Testing Program
• Envirotron
• Peanut CRSP
• Plant Genetic Resource Conservation Unit
• SARE/ACE