PORTAGEVILLE -- Traditional tours of cotton, soybean and weed-control plots will be featured at the University of Missouri Delta Center Field Day Sept. 2. A new technology tour and a question-and-answer session will be added this year.

"Farming Challenges of the 21st Century" is the theme of the 36th annual event, said Jake Fisher, superintendent of the MU experiment farm seven miles southeast of Portageville on Highway T.

The new technology includes precision agriculture, chemigation systems and a production-and-weather model for rice.

University of Missouri Extension specialists and scientists from the Delta Center and the MU campus in Columbia will give reports. The popular test plots of herbicides for weed control in corn and soybeans will be on view. The cotton tour includes variety evaluation and insect control. On the soybean tour, a new cyst nematode-resistant variety will be shown.

Tour wagons will depart hourly from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Area agribusinesses will provide the noon meal. In case of rain, reports will be given indoors.