 I'm Andy Robinson, I'm the extension potato agronomist for NDSU and the University of Minnesota and we're really happy to see everybody here today. It's good that we're all here and able to gather after not being able to for a while, so thanks for coming. Before we get started, I want to recognize a few people that are here today. We have Greg Lardi, who's the Dean and Vice President for Agriculture at NDSU. Charlie Stotenall, Assistant Director for Extension, wherever Charlie's hiding, I don't know, he's in the camouflage coat, so he's probably hiding somewhere, you can't see him. And Jane Shue, where's Jane at? There's Jane, so she oversees the research at NDSU right now, so we are glad they're here. Also, I want to thank Carl Hoverson and the Hoverson Farms for hosting this, like they always do every year and for the great breakfast, so let's give them a hand. Thanks again, Carl, for your generosity and everything you do. I also want to recognize the MPPGA staff, Donovan and Ted and Todd right there hiding with us back to us. He's handing out programs, but thanks for them and all they do. First of all, I'll just give you a quick update for the summer as we all know it's been a hot year and as a result of the heat, I've had a lot of people I've talked to. We've had seen low tuber sets, that first tuber set was very low, so we have that, we have a second tuber set, and so yields are probably likely going to be a little bit changed, the profile is going to be changed, and there might be chances for physiological disorders in tubers, but that's kind of some of the things we're seeing. But because of the stress too, we've been seeing plants that are maturing quicker earlier, starting to senesce earlier because of that heat, and so this can also result, if you're storing seed or tubers, this can also result in added physiological aging in potatoes. So something to think about when you're storing and managing potatoes this winter. So that's certainly been a big issue as part of this heat stress we've had and the stress of the plants. I'm seeing more and more soil borne diseases starting to take hold in the plants, more verticillium, black dot, and Julie might talk a little bit more about that when she's up here, but I've been seeing that as well this year. Something else to keep in mind, I think too, we've had a few with the dry conditions we've had, we've had some herbicide carryover issues from last year, and so going into next year, herbicide carryover could potentially be a problem just because herbicides, when they're on dry soils, they tend to bind harder to the soils and they're less likely to get broken down between years, and so that's something just to be aware of as you start thinking about next year's crop and your fields. And one of the things we're working on with some of my associates is we're going to hopefully have an article about how to do a bioassay, but a good way to test if a field has herbicide carryover is more or less to dig some of that soil up and you put it in pots and you can plant some seeds in there, either potatoes or other indicator species that might show if there are any potential herbicide issues with that soil, so something just to keep in mind going into next year. So those are kind of some observations from this year. We haven't had any late blight found, disease pressure really has been pretty low, full year disease pressure has been low because of the weather, so that's been a good thing from the weather. And overall, you know, it looks like a good average crop that's coming on. So as far as research goes, I'll highlight one project that we have going on here actually at Hoverson Farms, my grad student, Jed Grove, wherever Jed's at, he's got a cowboy hat on, he's hiding somewhere, there he is. So he's doing a project here we've got going, it's funded by a specialty crop block grant, so we're looking at three varieties, Russet Bear Bank, Vanick Russet and Dakota Russet, and so we have three planting dates and we're doing a bulking study. We're looking at how fast they bulk, every two weeks he goes out and he takes a sample and he digs those out, and then at the same time from those samples, we're working with Dr. Pashy and she's looking at the amount of verticillium that's accumulating in those stems. And so we're not only looking at the bulking rate, but we're also looking at the rate of verticillium accumulation. And so that study is going on here, just down the road here in Laramore, and then we also have it replicated in Purim. And so it's a very interesting study, we hope to learn a lot of information, this is the first year, but hopefully by this winter's meeting, Jed will have some information to share with the growers about what we're learning about verticillium and bulking rate of some of these newer, different varieties that we have. We've got a lot of other trials going on this summer, we've got trials in Oaks, Tappin, Inkster, and in Minnesota and Purim and Becker, so doing a lot of different things with fertilizers, variety development, some of the culture management practices. And I have a student who's here, Fabian, he's doing a project on looking at, we're looking at narrow row spacings for red, yellow, and shit potatoes. And so we'll see some of that at Inkster this afternoon when we get up there. So those are some of the things we're working on in the agronomy program. We're just happy to be able to be here, to be together today, and I'm glad everybody could make it.