More Missouri National Guard troops are going to Afghanistan. Gov. Jay Nixon and U.S. Sen. Kit Bond attended a deployment ceremony in Jefferson City Thursday for 60 members who'll form an Agricultural Development Team. The team will be sent to the Nangarhar Province to help local farmers grow crops and work on other agricultural projects.

Specialists John and Jessica Byrd are husband and wife, and are being deployed together.

"It's very recent that as of 2006, the military just started allowing husbands and wives to be on the same deployment together."

"We're lucky, because we're the same rank that we can be together in the same unit, as if different rank structures don't allow that."

" For nepotism reasons."

The Byrds are both medics who will travel with the Agricultural Development Team as they work among the local Afghan population. The unit's deployment is expected to last one year. © Copyright 2012, KBIA