2025 CSU-TAPS Fun and Informative Field Day!
This year’s CSU-TAPS summer Field Day featured a field visit, competition insights, and BBQ lunch—all in an engaging new format.
More than 75 people joined the CSU-Testing Ag Performance Solutions (TAPS) team on July 25 for the program’s 2025 Field Day. Now in its third year, the competition is enjoying a growing community of participants and supporters from across the region. Hosted at Colorado State University’s Agricultural Research, Development, and Educational Center (CSU-ARDEC) South facility northeast of Fort Collins, Colorado, this year’s event was sponsored by the Colorado Corn Promotion Council.
The Field Day crowd included a mix of competition team members, industry partners, research colleagues, CSU students and faculty, and federal and state agency staff. People took advantage of a chance to engage with fellow TAPS supporters and with ag industry connections at partner tables. Repeat and new attendees gathering together under shade tents on the lawn gave the event a festive, family feel. (Scroll down for photos.)
CSU-TAPS staff provided an opening presentation with updates and insights on this year’s competition progress. From there, the participants headed to the field to check out their plots and visit point-of-interest “stations” to discuss in-field technologies, drone data, and hybrid and seeding rate selections within the competition’s full and limited irrigation tracks. The dialogue in the field was a great way to involve ag tech partners in reviewing the range of decisions made and engaging with participants.
“We provided everyone with updated maps along with field data,” said Omer Izrael, CSU-TAPS program manager, “to support their thinking about upcoming decisions in the competition.”
Several ag tech, service, and seed partners were on hand to share information expertise with participants: Bret Laprarie, AquaSpy; Adam Postovit, Brevant Seeds; Felix Barron and Jason French, CropX; Jennie Roemmich and Alec Maddox, Crossroads Coop; Kathi LaPoint, Pioneer Seed; and Jack Tickner, Sentinel Ag. Also attending were Chris Pires, head of CSU College of Agricultural Sciences Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, and Nick Colglazier, executive director of Colorado Corn Promotion Council.
Everyone enjoyed visiting over a delicious smoked BBQ lunch catered by local business Maya Cove restaurant’s Bama Breeze BBQ catering. People hung around afterwards to chat and make repeat visits to the field to check out their plots.
“We really want to thank the ARDEC staff, led by Karl Whitman and Andy Clark, for their help in hosting this event—cleaning, helping with setup and teardown, and taking part,” Izrael said. “They are a vital part of CSU-TAPS.”
“We were happy to have so many people join us for the field day from all aspects of TAPS—producers, industry, educational, and research,” said Amy Kremen, Irrigation Innovation Consortium associate director. The IIC operates the CSU-TAPS program under the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences in CSU’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
“We can’t thank all involved enough, from our competitors to our ag industry partners and our research and educational colleagues,” she added. “And many thanks to Colorado Corn Promotion Council for the sponsorship support.”
The 2025 CSU-TAPS competition continues through the growing season and into a fall harvest, after which the team will calculate the results. Winners will be revealed at the CSU-TAPS Annual Banquet on January 10, 2026. Watch for details to come; you won’t want to miss it!
Story by IIC staff
Photos by Amy Kremen, Chris Pires, Christine Hamilton, and CSU College of Agricultural Sciences Communications team
