
DATE: Tuesday, September 23, 1997           TAG: 9709230250

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARY REID BARROW, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  106 lines

A GROWING REPUTATION AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH HAS BEEN GOING ON AT DIAMOND SPRINGS IN VIRGINIA BEACH FOR 90 YEARS.

You probably never thought about why you can gather baskets of sweet blueberries at area pick-your-own farms.

Or why farmers here have been growing the same variety of collards for years.

Or why your neighbors have a fuzzy kiwi vine twining up their garden trellis.

But those fruits and vegetables along with other plants are grown locally because of a behind-the-scenes operation called the Hampton Roads Agricultural Research and Extension Center.

Since the early years of the 20th century, scientists at the 70-acre center on Diamond Springs Road just off busy Northhampton Boulevard have been experimenting with fruits, vegetables, ornamental trees, shrubs, flowers and even lawn grasses to find out what grows best in southeastern Virginia.

On Wednesday, they will celebrate the facility's 90th anniversary at a field day. Scientists will use the event to show off their stuff to professional and amateur horticulturists and anyone else who's interested. Participants will be able to tour research and demonstration projects - the nuts and bolts of the center - not generally open to the public.

The facility contains laboratories, greenhouses and rows upon rows of plant varieties being tested in Hampton Roads' hot, buggy, humid conditions. Most labs are not pristine and white but well worn and long used. Some still are equipped with ancient wooden cabinets that hold slides and other glassware used to conduct analyses.

The main building was built in the 1950s but was constructed around the original little shed roof cottage where research began almost a century ago.

Historic photos show how the research station was in the middle of nowhere, just a stop on the rail line between Norfolk and Cape Henry. One picture shows a worker, tilling the fields, behind a mule-pulled plow. Another is of one of the earlier field days, taken in 1916, showing farmers and growers dressed in neckties and hats lined up in a field to hear the latest research on Irish potatoes.

In those days, the research station was managed by Southern Produce Co. In 1920, it became a state agency and in 1985, it was taken under the wing of Virginia Tech. In addition to ongoing research, the center now offers a master's degree in horticulture from Virginia Tech, as an evening program, said director Peter B. Shultz.

In the early years, the station did a lot of research to develop new varieties of plants that would grow well in this area. The VATES collard, developed by station scientists more than 50 years ago, is one of the station's more notable successes. That same collard comprises 50 percent of what is still grown in Virginia today.

In the hard-pressed years of the Great Depression, scientists came up with a blight-resistant strain of spinach.

``The blight threatened to wipe out the entire spinach crop,'' Shultz said, ``and the scientists developed a remedy.''

The center now leaves the development of new varieties up to private industry, Shultz said. Today, the 14 full-time employees, including five Ph.D. research scientists, devote most of their efforts to evaluating alternative crops, such as blueberries, for farmers and new plants for homeowners, such as kiwis. They develop weed, disease and integrated pest management strategies. And they study ways to reduce nutrient run-off from lawns and commercial nurseries to protect water quality, among other research programs.

The Virginia Tech Display Gardens, open to the public, feature theme gardens, like a butterfly garden or native plant garden, along with the newest varieties of herbs, annuals and perennials, which are being tested for this area.

``The challenges of the future have to do with changing lot sizes and what the best trees are for smaller landscapes,'' Shultz said, ``with two-income families and the need for low maintenance plants and with ways to reduce pesticides to preserve water quality.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Photos

STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot

Galina Epelman, a lab specialist, works on a study at the Hampton

Roads Agricultural Research and Experiment Station analyzing nitrate

content in fertilizer runoff.

Vivian Ashbacker, left, and Leilani Ozment, both volunteers, tend to

beds of annual flowers in the trial gardens of the research

facility.

Graphic RESEARCH PROJECTS

Controlling maple tree pests. Scientists are trying to identify

insects that attack a young maple's shoot tips and stunt its growth.

Learning to control this pest will help cities that install young

maples in streetscapes and homeowners who want fast-growing shade