Welcome!

Welcome to the University of Tennessee's Plateau Research & Education Center. Widely known for its contributions in fruit and vegetable research, the Center was established in 1943 and includes 2,100 acres in three locations. The Center is about equal distance from Nashville, Knoxville, and Chattanooga and is the site of research in beef, fruits and vegetables, field crops, and swine. The Center is most noted for its studies in beef, squash, muskmelons, watermelons, pumpkins, greens, cabbage, green beans, apples, blueberries, and tomatoes.

Information from studies at the Center is applicable to small, part-time, family farm operations. Research data from annual fruit and vegetable variety trials is widely used by growers large and small, both in Tennessee and across the nation.

The Plateau Research & Education Center is the site of studies on the efficiency of livestock enterprises, fruit and vegetable production and marketing, soil fertility and conservation research, and hay and pasture studies. Early studies at the station helped bring mechanical harvesting of green beans to Tennessee. Today the Center's research programs reach across the state and the US. One of the Center's multi-state, multi-agency, multidisciplinary efforts is in the Rutgers University-based Interregional Research Project No. 4, which involves the USDA, EPA, the agrichemicals industry and others in investigations of minor crops -- those grown on 300,000 acres or less, which encompasses most food crops other than large-acreage commodity crops such as corn and soybeans.

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The Center operates as one of 10 Research and Education Centers in the UT AgResearch system. Visitors are welcome during field days, Research in Progress Days, Extension meetings, school visits, and commodity group meetings. Tours and visits can be scheduled at other times, as well. Contact us for more details.