This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the Sugar Beet Growing Season. Welcome to the 1st Sugar Beet Report of 2024. Our first guest of the season is the new NDSU and University of Minnesota Extension Sugar Beet Specialist, Eric Branch. Eric is also responsible for lining up the guests for the Sugar Beet Report. Welcome, Eric. Many people will be hearing from you for the first time. Tell us about your background.

Yeah. Thank you, Bruce. I joined the department of plant pathology last November as an assistant professor and more importantly sugar beet specialist. My background and training are in plant pathology. I got my PhD previously.

Spent the last 5 years out in New York at Cornell University in the central part of the state studying plant pathology, particularly rhizoctonia on table beets. And the red beets that we eat in cans, we eat in pickles, these red beets, it's kind of a big industry in the western part of the state. Relatively big, so to speak. Right? Only about 2500 acres grown for the processing market.

Those were my stakeholders out there and and working with that group and Rhizoctonia, cercospora, other disease issues really helped me get some extension experience. And, when I had the chance to apply for the position here at NDSU, I thought it was a great opportunity to continue working with growers and stakeholders in a way that I'm passionate about, as well as a chance to, secondarily move back to the Midwest where I grew up. I actually grew up in Alexandria, Minnesota, so not too far from here. So coming back to Fargo kinda felt like home. Another perk of the job and and I'm happy to be back for that too.

Great. Well, welcome home. What kind of research have you been doing and how does it relate to sugar beets?

Yeah, absolutely. So for my PhD career, I kind of sorted my research into 2 main categories. 1st, what can we do to solve and help tackle some immediate disease concerns that growers have? And, second, what can we do to build long term strategies for disease management? What's gonna work now but also into the future?

What are some next steps and new ideas that we can look into? So on the first part, rhizoctonia, fungal pathogen that causes root decay, was a big issue throughout the season for these table beet growers. Table beets, unlike sugar beets, don't have the same seed treatments and fungicides available for use just the way that the product is marketed and, you know, the label laws are a lot different for that particular crop. So certain diseases are kinda weighted differently in the producer's mind out there. And so, of course, optimizing which products are effective and when to apply them, whether that's in furrow or post emergent, was a big issue and my role in that was to, get some good solid objective data to help answer those questions.

That was the goal of mine and that worked out pretty well. And, I also spent some time, a lot of time, looking into the microbiome associated with table beets and the fungus and how that's all affected by the addition of azoxtrotben, a fungicide that was applied in furrow. And so that was a really unique project for me and gave me some great research skills and I'm happy to continue that line of work also to some degree here too. A lot of unanswered questions in microbial world and a lot of stuff to find out there.

How about the sugar beet report? What do you have planned for the growing season?

Yeah, absolutely. So coming up here, I'm happy to continue the tradition of bringing forth a great set of guests, academic experts, industry experts, as well to provide pretty much up to the minute, right, timely, fact based information about how the sugar beet season is progressing. We have our array of North Dakota State University and University of Minnesota Extension specialists covering everything from plant pathogens, insect management, weed control, as well as soil and fertility issues that are relevant to sugar beet growers.

Well, Eric, as the new sugar beet specialist, any final thoughts?

I'm new to this, but I'm very happy to be here and really looking forward to this field season both for my own research and to meet all of you and to, really get to be a part of the sugar beet industry together. Thank you.

Thanks, Eric. Our guest has been Eric Branch, NDSU and University of Minnesota Extension Sugar Beet Specialist. This is the Sugar Beet Report, bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.