Ground for a new Plant Sciences Building was broken in summer 1966 by Dean of Agriculture Webster Pendergrass and Trustees Clyde York and Jerome Taylor. York was head of the board’s Agriculture Committee, and Taylor was head of the Building Committee. Morton and Sweetser and Glenn Bullock and Associates were the architects. The contractor was Rentenbach Engineering. The budgeted amount of $1,882,800 was for the structure, of which state bond funds for 1965–67 totaled $625,000. A loan from the Tennessee State School Bond Authority accounted for $1,257,800.
Completed in 1968 the Plant Sciences Building was named by the board of trustees in October 1970 for former Governor of Tennessee Buford Ellington and was formally dedicated in 1971 with Governor Dunn and former Governor Ellington in attendance. The 78,000-square-foot building provided 45,000 square feet of usable space. It was designed to provide most of the classrooms and laboratories for Plant and Soil Science; Entomology and Plant Pathology; Ornamental Horticulture and Landscape Design; and Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries.