 This is the sugar beet report bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season. Controlling sugar beet diseases can be a difficult challenge, often depending on the disease. Today we're discussing rhizomania, not rhizectonia, which is a fungus. Rhizomania is viral. Here to help us better understand this disease is Vanitha Ramachandran, USDA research plant pathologist in the sugar beet and potato research unit. Vanitha, what exactly is the disease rhizomania and what are the symptoms? Rhizomania is one of the most destructive diseases of sugar beet because it directly affects the roots and sugar beet is grown for its root. So that sounds it's an important disease. It's a soil-borne disease that occurs throughout the sugar beet growing regions of the world. It causes severe yield loss in absence of effective control measures. The disease is caused by a virus and its name is beet necrotic yellow vein virus which is transmitted by a root-infecting parasite called polymixa bta. Once infested the parasite can survive for decade in the soil. In terms of symptoms the affected plants commonly exhibit varying degrees of alloying or foliage and often have an erect upright posture. Rhizomania is characterized by root stunting and proliferation of lateral rootlets on the main tap root that give the root as a bearded appearance and the storage root is often constricted. It's like a turnip and in a cross-section the tap root shows discolored vascular tissue and appears as darkened rings. All of these impacts the sugar beet yield, sugar content and juice purity when plants are infected especially in early stages of the growth. The disease shows typically up around August through September of the growing season but it varies with the climatic conditions. How is rhizomania managed and treated? Well at present there is no chemical treatment available to manage the vector that transmits the virus. The disease is primarily managed through host resistance which has been considered the most effective and least expensive tool and also successful incorporation of the host resistance to commercial cultivars has greatly reduced the damage in the sugar beets. However high disease selection pressure against the host resistance has led to the development of resistance breaking variants of the virus that first appeared on isolated plants in a field. So these referred in the industry as blinkers due to their distinctive yellow foliage and later it develops into a large diseased areas within the fields and those are called rhizomania patches. Host resistance is a way to go strategy for rhizomania management. How about down the road Venetha what are the future perspectives with rhizomania? Rhizomania like I said is managed through host resistance and the disease management depends on knowledge on the virus load in field soils and understanding of the disease resistance within available varieties and host pathogen interactions. We evaluate rhizomania infested field soils for resistance breaking and also we use high advanced sequencing technology called next generation sequencing to identify the viral variants at the nucleotide level that can overcome the protection provided by the host resistance. We study virus host interactions to identify how the host responses to the virus. Since rhizomania disease is managed through host resistance of course new management strategies are essential to maintain industry productivity and sustainability. Therefore identification of viral variants associated with the resistance breaking and molecular understanding of virus host interactions would be useful for developing new disease management strategies and diagnostic assays for future rhizomania management. Thanks Venetha. Our guest has been Venetha Ramachandran, USDA research plant pathologist in the sugar beet and potato research unit. This is the sugar beet report bringing you the latest information from NDSU throughout the sugar beet growing season.