 Welcome to the 2020 Minnesota Certified Seed Potato Report. This is the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's leadership team led by Commissioner Tom Peterson, Mark Abrahamson, and Nick Milanovsky. Our seed potato unit inspection staff consists of myself, Jackie Anderson, Jeff Miller, and Kimberly Nelson. Together we provide an inspection and certification service to the certified seed potato growers in the state of Minnesota under the rules and statutes of the seed potato certification law. Certified seed potato fields receive three field inspections evaluating stand, vigor, insect control, weed control, and pathogen virus detection, including bacterial ring rot. Shipping point inspections ensure the quality of the seed potatoes being sold. Good record keeping and documentation are vital for a successful trace back in the event of a critical disease outbreak. Detecting disease and pathogens helps to prevent the movement of disease and pathogens. Good inspection practices provide their growers with additional knowledge and confidence to help them make informed decisions about their crop. Minnesota certified seed potato growers entered 6,267 acres for the crop year 2020. Of those, 1,122 acres were rejected during the summer, mainly for mosaic in the certified class. We received 293 seed samples in the East Grand Forks Office through October 16th. Samples were then sorted by variety and numbered. They were palletized and loaded onto a trailer and shipped to North Dakota State Seed in Grafton, North Dakota. They were then gassed with bromoethane and transloaded onto a truck for shipment to Homestead, Florida. Our cooperative farm in Homestead, Florida is Elger Farms. They provided service for the post harvest winter test. The Minnesota Department of Agriculture cooperated with the North Dakota State Seed Department to do the planting in Homestead, Florida. Minnesota Department of Agriculture staff staggered their travel times to help plant both the North Dakota and the Minnesota seed potato plots. Kimberly arrived in Homestead on November 15th with Jeff arriving a few days later on November 17th. Samples were dipped in the morning of the 16th and planting began November 19th, finishing November 21st. The partnership with North Dakota State Seed was a success and we thank them for their help. This is what the seed potato plot looked like on January 5th, 49 days after planting. The top picture represents a very good example of a PBY positive plant. Field test kits were used to verify visual positive PBY plants in the field. The field test kits used also screened for PBYM. Leaves from visual positive plants along with a negative control from the lot were picked and sent to the Plant Diagnostic Lab at NDSU for confirmation. Percentage of virus is relevant to tuber count. Varieties found to be latent to PBY are also screened. Emergence of some variety specific seed lots and weeds created challenges in reading this year's post-harvest winter test. This is a chart representing the past fail lots by seed class. In order for a lot to pass the post-harvest winter test it must meet the tolerance of one half of 1% virus and other tolerances. As you can see 85% of the seed lots in Minnesota passed the post-harvest winter test this year compared to 67% in 2019. In addition this is the past fail acreage by seed class. As you can see 87% of the acreage passed compared to 2019 when only 69% passed. This is a chart of eligible seed lots by percent virus. Of the 221 eligible seed lots in Minnesota this year 182 or 82% are virus free. This is a picture of the seed plot on January 20th 64 days after planting. As you can see there were numerous weeds. We were happy to have Minnesota seed growers visit our winter test plot this year. Pictured are Brian from Black Gold, Justin from Dagen Farms and his daughter, Tyson from Swenson Farms, and Luke from Twin Rivers and his agronomist Chad. Thank you all for coming. In summary 85% of all Minnesota seed potato lots passed the post-harvest winter test this year. So the inoculum should be low which is good news for our seed producers. If you're planning to purchase seed potatoes you should always ask for a North American health certificate. This document provides a valuable information about the history of that seed lot including the winter test results and the emergence rate and it's also a requirement for documentation for certified seed programs. Due to the coronavirus we were unable to travel to Hawaii to conduct our post-harvest winter test this year. In August we reached out to North Dakota, Ken Birch and Ken Sather and they helped us to align with Alger Farms in Florida. We would really like to thank them for that and also give a thank you to Robert Souter and Ken Sather and also Mark Thompson for helping us plant the winter test plot this year. Thanks to all of you. I don't think we could have gotten it done without you. Thank you to Andy Robinson for helping us get this information out to the industry. If you have any questions or comments you can contact me directly at 218-255-0406 or you can email me at eric.byrie at state.mn.us. Again, thank you.