About 5,000 people – from as far away as West Virginia – celebrated the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (NYSAES) 125th anniversary, Sept. 15, in Geneva, N.Y., learning how crops are improved, plant pests outsmarted and new products developed from the resulting bounty.

"The experiment station was high-tech before there were the words 'high-tech,'" said N.Y. State Sen. Michael Nozzolio '73, M.S. '77. Other speakers, who included Cornell President David Skorton, State Commissioner of Agriculture Patrick Hooker '84, NYSAES Director Thomas Burr, Susan Henry, dean of Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, N.Y. State Sen. Catharine Young and Geneva Mayor Donald Cass, noted the experiment station's leading role in advancing agricultural practice and economic development regionally and nationally. Hooker spoke of extending the model established there to help meet the worldwide agricultural needs of the next 125 years, saying, "We have to think about how to feed the billions of people in the world who live on less than $2 a day."

The 870-acre campus was abuzz with activity guided by 387 volunteer staff, faculty, graduate students, retirees and 15 undergrad Future Farmers of America members, among others. Young children with painted faces painted pumpkins, tossed rings over ears of corn and with their families toured the live insect zoo. Across the way, metallic gold and silver chrysalises hung from wooden racks like earrings on display, as more than 300 exotic butterflies on loan from Rochester's Strong Museum fluttered about in a greenhouse.

The gene gun, developed at Geneva in the late-1980s, was on display, and the plant doctor was in as people lined up to find out what was plaguing their plants. Other exhibits included apple grafting, tomato pollen-crossing and a do-it-yourself DNA extraction kit to take home and try on a banana.

Over at the food science and technology vinification and brewing lab, people sniffed Cayuga White wine – a variety developed at NYSAES – spiked with concentrations of aroma compounds. When various descriptors like wet dog, bruised apples, rotten eggs and moldy basement were given, Gavin Sacks '99, M.S. '01, Ph.D. '05, and Cornell assistant professor of wine chemistry, explained: "All of these compounds can actually be pleasant or interesting at the right levels and in the right wines," he said. "At the wrong level, they can be disgusting."

Of five separate tours offered at the open house, one showed off the experiment station's McCarthy Farm, where wild apple trees grow from seeds that were collected in the remote mountains of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The extra-hardy stock represents 6 million to 8 million years of adaptation that will be put to use improving the world's apples.

"There's a mystery about what goes on at the station in the public's eye, and I think that's why so many people came," said Gemma Osborne, who coordinated the event. "They want to know more about what we do."