MAES is often mistakenly thought of as the University of Minnesota fields and facilities on the St. Paul campus and at Research and Outreach Centers across the state. While those are important places for our work, MAES is not a physical place but rather a research program that engages hundreds of University of Minnesota faculty and staff and reaches thousands of Minnesotans statewide.
Learn more about MAES research in some of Minnesota's key industries:
Corn | Soybean | Small grains | Poultry | Swine | Dairy | Forests
2025 University of Minnesota field crop variety trial results available now
The Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) and the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS) have published the 2025 Minnesota Field Crop Variety Trials. Visit varietytrials.umn.edu to see variety trials for 7 different Minnesota crops.
Crops included in this year’s trial include barley, canola, oat, soybean, spring wheat, winter rye, and winter wheat. Crops were trialed at several CFANS Research and Outreach Centers and in cooperating farmers’ fields across the state.
UMN cold-hardy breeding program delivers beautiful flowering shrubs
The story goes that in 1860, famous journalist Horace Greeley said, "I would not live in Minnesota, because you cannot grow apples there." Fast forward more than a century and a half and one of the most popular apple varieties in the United States—one widely enjoyed around the world—was created right here in Minnesota. The Honeycrisp was even named Minnesota’s official state fruit in 2006, as if to say, “How do you like them apples, Mr. Greeley?” Released in 1991 by the University of Minnesota’s renowned cold-hardy breeding program, Minnesota’s crispiest of retorts to Greeley took just 131 years to come to fruition (though the University’s first apple introduction came in 1920).
Quality, of course, takes time.
The unique challenges of Minnesota’s cold winters have long frustrated seasonally optimistic gardeners, farmers, and other growers of fruits, vegetables, flowers, and more.
Still, since the University of Minnesota Department of Horticultural Science’s founding in 1888, the program has not sat idly by, having so far bred more than 400 varieties of cold-hardy adaptations.
Searching for Soybean Tentiform Leafminer Control Methods
A native North American moth commonly found in forested areas, the soybean tentiform leafminer has expanded its diet. The insect was first sighted in Canadian soybean fields in 2016. Robert Koch, University of Minnesota Extension Entomologist, identified the soybean tentiform leafminer in Minnesota in 2021. And now it has also been found in North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska soybeans.
“The soybean tentiform leafminer is a tiny moth whose larvae, or caterpillars, live inside and feed on soybean leaves,” explains Koch. “Through their feeding, the caterpillars are hollowing out, or mining, the leaf tissue and then those tissues die, reducing the plant’s ability for photosynthesis. A single caterpillar doesn’t destroy a large area within a plant, but over a season, the damage will add up from numerous caterpillars and multiple generations of the moth.”
Koch and Extension Educator Angie Peltier are evaluating the magnitude of the soybean tentiform leafminer threat and control methods in a project supported by the Rapid Agricultural Response Fund. Learn more about this research in this Soybean Research & Information Network story.