 Good morning, I'm Suzy Thompson and I'm the potato breeder here at North Dakota State University. I'm really sorry that we're unable to do field days in person this year, but I'm instead hoping that with the use of technology we'll still be able to share our valuable information. So the potato breeding program was initiated in 1930 here at North Dakota State University and in that time NDSU has released 26 potato varieties and several others in collaboration with other breeding programs around North America. North Dakota ranks about 4th. At times we go up and we also fall down in the ranking in terms of U.S. potato production, but the Red River Valley of Minnesota and North Dakota produce a tremendous amount of processing potatoes. About 60% of our potato production is for frozen french fries. We also produce chipping potatoes for making into potato chips, one of America's favorite snacks, and the Red River Valley itself is really quite famous for the beautiful red skinned cultivars for the fresh market. And so our breeding program is lucky, I feel. We are able to work on and develop varieties that fit all of those market types. In terms of market types, some of the quality characteristics that are important would be, for example, for our dual purpose russets, we want long potatoes that are blocky in shape so that they can make a large number of french fries per tuber. We also want them to have what we term high specific gravity, so they have high dry matter content in the frying process. The water in potato tubers is displaced by the oil, and so if you have high dry matter potatoes, then the amount of oil that is taken up is less, leading to a lower calorie product, but also the oil tends to be the highest cost ingredient of either chips or french fry varieties. We also want them to be low in sugar because then they process into nice white or very light golden fried products. For our fresh market varieties, like you can say way down on the end, many of those of course are red skinned with white fleshed, but we're starting to see an increase in interest here in the U.S. Yellow flesh is typical in other parts of the globe, particularly in Europe, so we're starting to see more interest in development of red skin varieties that have yellow flesh. A lot of them tend to taste good, but we as consumers of horticultural products we tend to shop with our eyes, so we're looking for that beautiful round shape, bright red skin color, and most of our fresh market varieties will have a lower specific gravity, so they're a little bit more waxy or creamy in texture, so that our potatoes hold together when we're making boiled potatoes or American fries in our fry pans. So that gives us a little bit of background in terms of our market types and some attributes that are important for each. In terms of locations, the NDSU Potato Breeding Program does a tremendous amount of research in the greenhouses here on campus, but we also have research trials spread across North Dakota and Western Minnesota. In North Dakota we have research trials at Crystal, Hoople, Laramore, Inkster, and at Oaks. On the Minnesota side we have research trials at Park Rapids, and as part of the breeding program also have to operate a certified seed potato operation, so our seed maintenance and increases as well as our seedling nursery are just to the southeast of Fargo-Moorhead here at Baker, Minnesota. In terms of the Oaks area, and the potatoes that we can see here are from the two trials that I have at Oaks. One would be our dual-purpose russet trial, and the other would be a fresh market trial. There will be a handout that will hopefully be available posted both at the website for the Oaks station field day as well as I will try to get it on the Potato Breeding website, which is accessible through the Plant Science Department's website. The growers in the Oaks area predominantly produce processing or dual-purpose russets for the processing into French fries or packing for the fresh market, things like baked potatoes for restaurants or industrial use, but also potatoes that could be baked in our grocery stores. And then of course we have the beautiful reds and Yukon Gold as a check for our yellow flesh down on the far end. Potato Breeding is really a team effort, and in order for a successful release, the Potato Breeding project itself cannot develop a cultivar on its own. We need a myriad of players, including our Extension Potato Specialist, Dr. Andy Robinson. I work closely with plant pathologists, Dr. Julie Pashie and Dr. Gary Secor, weed scientists, such as Dr. Harleen Haderman-Valente. And we're starting to do some work with Dr. Paulo Flores, who is in Ag Systems Bioengineering and looking at different means of doing high throughput phenotyping. So the trial that you see in the background here is a trial in collaboration with Dr. Haderman-Valente and Dr. Flores, as well as our grad student and a postdoc, where we are looking at herbicide sensitivity on a number of advancing selections, but also named cultivars, and seeing if we can't use new technologies such as drones in order to facilitate more rapid phenotyping of the germplasm in order to develop what we term cultivar specific management profiles for our new releases. Products are another important key feature of our research team, but really the ultimate user of our products are our producers, as well as our potato industry, so that might include processors, packers, and finally, we consumers of potatoes. We'll kind of venture down the line here real rapidly, and I might point out a couple of interesting parents. As I was driving into work this morning, there was a discussion on the radio station that I was listening to about how many lines a company had out in the field that they were evaluating and how many of those might become a new variety release. In the case of potato, about one in one million seedlings becomes a released or a named cultivar. So it's a big numbers game, but a lot of fun if you enjoy being outside and doing some hard work. Some of the clones that you'll see here, this one for example, Russet norcota, the female parent was a NDSU release back in the 1980s. It's extremely typey. This particular progeny looks very similar to that Russet norcota. Russet norcota is not able to be processed. It has too high of sugars and too low of specific gravity, so I crossed it with a line from the USDA program at Madison, Wisconsin, hoping that the progeny would become more dual purpose and be able to be made both into French fries but still have that beautiful appearance like a norcota. So as I mentioned, this one is a cross between Dakota Russet and Dakota Trailblazer. It is gradually working its way through the evaluation process with some of the processing companies with the hopes that it will be released in the near future also with dual purpose processing qualities. We have some interesting lines. For example, this male parent here, Q115-6, is a clone that has Colorado potato beetle resistance and it offers glandular trichomes, which are a type of hair on the potato leaves that the beetles don't really care for because when they break off those hairs, there is a little glob of exudate at the base of that hair and it causes their little tarsie, their feet, to get caught up in almost tar lake substance and they can't move and it also gums up their mandibles, so resulting in beetle resistance. So that one is moving along. Thought that I would just mention our Dakota Russet and I have to say that this year the russeting at Oaks is light. It's early in the season, but this particular area has received a tremendous amount of rainfall in 2020 and so it appears that our russeting for a lot of our varieties is going to be light, but Dakota Russet was one of our most recent releases and it is progressing through the evaluation process and has already been approved by multiple fast food or quick serve restaurants for use in frozen products, primarily french fries. In terms of our reds, you can see that we have some really beautiful skin color. The most recent red fresh market release is our Dakota Ruby and you can see it here. Many of the clones included in this year's trial have Dakota Ruby as one parent and you can see that the beautiful bright red skin color, the high tuber set and the uniformity of size really carries over. There are some kind of interesting varieties that we use as parents. This romance is a European proprietary variety, but we're able to use it as a parent and it has long tuber type with yellow flesh, but it has a myriad of resistances to things like potato virus Y and so you can see here we have two siblings and the difference between the two is quite remarkable. The dash 3R has that beautiful type-y round. Looks like you should be boiling those up right now whereas it's sibling, the dash 10RY has yellow flesh but also has a much paler skin color. As I mentioned with horticultural products we tend to shop with our eyes so more consumers would be interested in the bright red skinned ones versus the industry standards like red lasota and red norlin down at the far end. Thank you all very much for attending the Virtual Oaks Field Day. I hope that you have had an opportunity to learn a little bit about potato and I hope that you will also remember that potatoes are really little powerhouses from a nutritional standpoint and that you will consume them as part of a healthy diet.