 I feel bad that it's kind of sprinkly and drizzly out there because I was really excited to perhaps take a group of us out to see the new little mini pivot. Last year when we weren't able to all meet in person we actually had the first year of research at the second and new pivot that Hoverson Farms put up for potato research at NDSU or University of Minnesota so hopefully everybody at some point in time has an opportunity to go out there and see the fantastic trials that are being produced out there. And we extend a huge thank you to Hoverson Farms for being so supportive of all of the potato research that we do. While I'm on thank yous I have a huge list of thank yous thanks to the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association for putting together all of today's events. As most of you know we're starting here at Hoverson Farms but then we're moving north to Inkster and we're finishing up the day with a nice barbecue at Oberk Storage at Hoople North Dakota and as far as the breeding program goes while we're here at Hoverson Farms I present a lot of our russet material that's coming through the breeding program but when we get to our final stop this evening there the focus is more on the fresh market as well as the chip processing market and what potatoes are coming through the breeding program suitable for those market types. Additional thanks beyond Hoverson Farms and Northern Plains Potato Growers Association I would like to extend a thank you to my team and I guess before I do that hopefully they're all sort of where I can have them raise their hand or they can be seen. On the table along this south wall where the potato display is is a handout and there's a number of copies so please feel free to take that it is for the whole entire day so if you you know start here this morning and get a chance to see the russet potatoes the same handout but the back pages are where the information about the reds and the chippers is located. Okay now that maybe my crew will have been located obviously as a potato breeder first of all you can't just do everything by yourself. There is a tremendous amount of collaboration as Laura mentioned our two programs are doing a lot of work together. We have a super team at NDSU from Gary, Dr. Julie Pashie, Andy, Dr. Harleen Hatterman Valente we're doing more and more work with Dr. Apollo Flores from Ag Systems Bioengineering and so potato improvement is really a collaboration between a lot of different team players. So my breeding team is made up of Dick Nilles he's been the research technician on the team for I don't know 15 years long time anyway so most of you see him when we're planting or harvesting and he's driving the tractor. I have a number of graduate students that work on our project and so the first one I would like to introduce is Hashim and Edie. Hashim is from Nigeria and this is his second year and he has been working on herbicide sensitivity screening project with Dr. Hatterman Valente and Dr. Flores and I and so he's developing a rapid method to accurately estimate if our advancing selections are sensitive to Senncor or to Metribusen. Tannis Anderson is a second year master student as well and she is helping my program move into the 21st century but Tannis is working on extracting dihapoids or diploids from our tetraploid potatoes and so I have her started working with Dakota Trailblazer because Trailblazer has just been a magnificent clone and possesses so many resistances and is so fun from a sustainability aspect requiring low amounts of fertilizer and water and fungicides and so she's working on that project with me and today I have a new graduate student David and David just arrived from Kenya about two weeks ago and he hasn't selected this project yet but he made with Dr. Munever, Dr. Masi and I or he may wind up working on a project with Dr. Pashie and Dr. Shannon and I and she worked hourly with my program last year and during the course of the school year started to do an undergraduate research project and her project actually is here at the mini pivot and is the result of a specialty block grant that Dr. Seekor and Dr. Robinson and I received and it has to do with and the other person that works on it as well is Dr. McCrae it has to do with aphoil which is a crop oil that we use to try to deter aphid feeding and it works by actually cleaning the stylet off as aphids are probing from one potato plant to the next and so Elizabeth has been working with that part of our project is because seed potato growers particularly that are using aphoil on a minimally once every seven day application rate during the summertime we're having a hard time getting good vine kill in a timely manner and so Elizabeth has taken on this project as an undergraduate because during COVID we were unable to secure a graduate student and so it's been very exciting so that is my team that is with me today. As far as the potatoes hopefully everybody saw there's a big huge display on the south wall over here this is the most advanced Russets in our breeding program you'll see a lot of numbers on it's on page three I guess table one of your handout you'll see a lot of numbers that you recognize the majority of those would be farther to the left as I'm facing the table the eight cultivars that they are being compared against are on the west table and so there you'll get a good opportunity to see Dakota Russet and Dakota Trailblazer along with other standards like Russet Norcota and Russet Burbank. As far as the numbered lines there are three different ones that are in the National French Fry Processing Trial at varying stages and then the ND 12, not looking at my numbers, 12, 241 YB-2 Russ is in Tier 3 in the National French Fry Processing Trial and it has been looking quite promising. Right next door to that one is an ND 12154 YB-2 Russ it was in the National French Fry Processing Trial back in 2017 I have it in a trial over at Park Rapids and last week in the big processing dig that we did it was the highest yielding cultivar out of or it's not a cultivar yet but numbered line out of all of the cultivars and numbered lines in that trial and it was already about it was exceeding 550 hundred weight to the acre and all of the French fries were coming out as zeros so that line is looking very, very promising and it looks quite good over here. On the table also the three newest ones over there are ND 273 BC-1 Russ and the two ND 14286 BCs they are dash two Russ and dash seven Russ and they are surprisingly good in terms of both appearance and yield potential so while heat and lack of rain have significantly impacted a lot of our production I know as far as our seed operation things are small and a little bit delayed when we dug the samples for later today those tubers are small but overall under irrigation things are really looking good and so I feel like we have a good test and a good display and I look forward to chatting with people if they are interested I was going to offer a little tour out to the mini pivot but I think given the rain I would prefer to stay out of the mud out there so thank you if anybody has any questions hopefully I didn't forget oh I did forget to say two things I'm clutching some note cards up here during the course of the year also if you read the handout you'll see all of the different sorts of projects that were involved in but I'd rather focus on the processing Russ it's while we're up here in May we had a variety release meeting and Dakota Dawn was named so very excited about that it's the first specialty variety coming out of the NDSU breeding program and sometime hopefully in the next few months I know I keep saying this every year but 75 19-1 which is a beautiful cold chipper just finished its third year in the snack food association trial and so it is looking very promising we have a lot of growers in North Dakota and beyond that are interested in producing this clone and so hopefully we're going to be having a variety release meeting for it and I'll just put out a little teaser I'm hoping to somehow be able to honor Bryce fernsworth that worked with our breeding program for 48 years and a lot of the of our success is because of the work that Bryce had done and so I have a name picked out that incorporates some of his name and so hopefully you'll all hear about that when we get to get get to get together again at the Alaris Center for the research reporting conference and the crop six bow in February thank you.