 Before I start talking about some of the plant breeding and some of the other aspects we do on developing crops for the organic, just a little bit about the Department of Plant Sciences. It's the largest department on campus. We have 42 faculty working in areas from agronomy, plant breeding, genetics, weed science, horticulture, cereal science and food science. So we really have a diverse group of faculty and I think that really helps when you think of taking that food from the field to the plate because we're looking at all aspects of those type of activities. As Steve said, I was hired in 1988, my gosh, that's 33 years ago and I was hired to develop Six Road Barley for the large brewing companies. Basically, he had two customers, you can figure out who those are. And that industry is very, very particular and it's really true of all the large food companies. Since they have exact parameters that they want you to develop for in those new varieties for them to be accepted. It's going to have the right protein, it's going to have the right plumps, enzyme levels, extract the proteins to make the foam in the beer, name it, they have traits for it. And if you're a farmer and tried to sell your barley, doesn't it seem like some years they just find something wrong with it, right? So they don't have to buy it, like the proteins too high. In a year like this, in a drought condition, they're going to be buying high protein. You guys have long memories, they tend to have very short memories, right? So we're just as challenged and sometimes get just as frustrated as you do when it comes to developing these new varieties. It was about less than 15 years ago, my colleague Paul Schwartz and I, we were getting a lot of calls from the craft brewing industry and the craft malting industry. And one of the biggest questions they had is why aren't you developing varieties for us? And so we had conversations with them, what are you looking for? And they started saying, well, we want lower protein, well, we can do that. But then they started, what was really interesting was they wanted lower enzymes, lower proteins that go into foams. And a lot of these other traits that when you ask the large breeding companies, especially about enzymes, give us more, give us as much as you can give us for these enzymes because they have corn and rice in their beer. And they need those enzymes to help break down that corn or rice. But if you're looking at a craft beer, it's 100% malt. They don't need all those enzymes to break down the corn and the rice. And so they wanted lower enzyme levels. And what was interesting is we had this conversation, it came to be that I was throwing out stuff that would work for them. And it was just, it was kind of, you got to be kidding me. I just tossed this stuff. And so that's been really exciting, working with the craft industry because we just released a variety this year called Bruceke. And the farmer we work with is Greg Kessel. And he owns part of a malt company outside Bismarck called Two Track Malt. The name, you know, a lot of people want to know, how do you come up with variety names? Well, his kids had a Facebook contest and they came up with the name Bruceke. So that was pretty cool. And, but this is specifically our first variety release for that craft industry. It's going only to the small maltsters and it's only going to the smaller brewers, three to seven barrel systems, though there's some others. And it's really, he's built such a following with this new variety in a single year that he's actually paying another malt company in Butte Montana to produce malt for him. So it's taken off very quickly. And so I started thinking as a breeder, you know, if you can do this in barley, why can't you do this in wheat? Why can't you do this in potatoes and dry beans and, you know, just name the crop? Because if we're throwing out stuff in barley that probably would work the local foods. What about our other crops? And that's about the same time Steve introduced me to Dan Barber and Fred Kirschman. And we started having this conversation as like my God, we're asking for the same thing. You know, we want those culls. We want those varieties that you discard. And when we started looking at wheat, exactly, our dose, you know, half our wheat in this state is exported to Asia. And because it's considered an additive, they want to combine our very, very strong high protein wheat with their locally produced wheat to bring the quality up of their local wheat. And when you try to do that with artists and breads, it just doesn't work. It's way too strong. And so we started, Andrew Greener, a wheat breeder, started sending the baker at Blue Hill at Dan's restaurant, you know, varieties, Glen, nope, too strong. Some other varieties from NDSU, still too strong. Fowlering and prosper, we consider those weak wheats, not too strong. This is how we started thinking, oh my God, we have to go really fine. And so it's these kind of conversations you have with these artisan bakers and these local foods that you start identifying what really works. So we're still working on that project. But working through Dan on the Oat Breeding Program, we identified our Mike McMullins, our oat breeder. He developed this hull-less oat that's, it's really a replacement for Paul Oates. And what was unique about it was high in lipids. Now if you eat oatmeal every day, how many of you eat oatmeal? Why? Lower your cholesterol, right? That's the heart-healthy part of oats. Well, the thing with this oat variety is that it couldn't get that heart-healthy label because it was over 8% fat or 8% lipids. But Dan would just sit there and eat this stuff raw and he'd go, God, this stuff tastes good. Why don't you release it? We've got to find something out of it. If you know Dan, you can just hear him doing that and Burton's laughing because he's seen it. And it got to the point where he believed in the variety. It's done very well on the farms. And so Row 7, his seed company, licensed the variety. So they're just trying to find a market. Again, that's the biggest challenge, finding a market for those crops. And he's designing different food products and so forth. Another example we had for an NDSU release that didn't make it in the conventional market is our potato program. This is Susie Thompson, our potato breeder. One of the biggest markets is Russet's for your local fast food restaurants. And that potato's got to be a certain shape, certain size, certain weight, certain starch, because every French fry has to be the same, right? Well, there's a lot of things that come out of her program that just don't work, but they're really cool. She had this pinto, or this potato was pinto colored. On the flesh it was, or on the skin it was reddish and bluish and yellow. And like a pinto pony, just a beautiful potato. And then you cut it open, it's just yellow inside. Great flavor, but this is not going to go to your large food companies. But you can surely see that variety in your local foods, your farmer's markets, your local supermarket. And so this is another variety we're trying to find a home for it. And Row 7's going to be licensing that variety from us too. We're not going exclusive to Row 7, but you have to look for those opportunities to market those new varieties. Because not only with our large commodity markets, but that local foods is the same challenge, variety acceptance. The last example, I'll go back to Farm Breeder Club. They developed Dillon Wheat. And we had some calls last, some conversations with some people that there might be a big test wanted for this variety. They were, it could go maybe to a larger processor. And the big fear was, we don't have any seed. We don't have any production. If they ask us for four or five trucks of this stuff, I don't think we had, what do you have, Steve? 50 pounds, we hardly any. So is that chicken in the egg? Do you have the seed to do the processing? So those are things that we're struggling with on all levels of plant breeding. Not only at the university, but the small breeders as well. And so those are some of the things we're doing on the plant breeding side working. At the department, Burton talked about the land expansion we had on campus. That's just shocks people that we have organic land on campus. Like really? And I'm gonna give Greta a lot of credit. Greta Grammick, she'll be talking a little bit on the weeds that is the biggest problem. And she wanted to expand it organic. We had no certified organic land on campus. So we put her out at Absaraca about 30 miles from campus on the Hort farm. And that's the only place we could do it at the time. And now we've expanded on campus. And there's four research sites across the state now, where we can do organic research here, Dickinson, Absaraca, and Fargo. So I'll finish up there. Are there any questions? You mentioned licensing. So do they have to pay a licensing fee to the university? So anytime we develop any varieties at the university, they're provided to the research foundation. It has NDSU in its name, but it's not part of NDSU. And they do the licensing agreements. On the specialty releases, any of these small releases would be specialty releases because they would die without anyone there supporting them. And so that's just, it's a negotiation that takes place between the research foundation and the companies. So it could be anything from a royalty fee on the seed, or possibly maybe the royalty is on the amount of flour produced or the amount of malt produced. So they take different shapes depending on the crop. The thing we, you know, you would love to see free seed, but we need to make our breeding programs more sustainable because they're disappearing. And our farm breeders, they have costs as well, and we want to make and be able to support those programs. But organic seed is usually significantly cheaper than conventional seed? It is, if you can find it. That's the challenge. Steve and I were having a discussion yesterday. The challenge is finding foundation seed of organic. And so the far... I think what she's referred to mostly is the corn and soybeans. Exactly, yeah. Corn and soybeans are cheaper because of the traits. Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, that's the... We work in no traded varieties, no GM varieties. So that makes it much, much cheaper. Yeah. As farmers, we've kind of gotten used to, especially at these types of crops, cheap seed. And yet we turn around and spend $100 an acre for corn seed, soybean seed, canola seed, whatever, and don't blink an eyeball. And that's always kind of been a frustration. It's like, I don't mind the licensing fee. I think it needs to be there. We should be paying... We should be helping pay for our own research. Yeah, and if you know that, that licensing fee is going back to support the research that developed those varieties, I think that makes it a little bit easier to understand. So that's definitely... That's why we're looking at, on the breeding programs, these opportunities for these varieties that would have been discarded, looking for opportunities to market those. I want to introduce one person, John McVoy. He's here from Microbiological Sciences. He talked about the agribiome projects at NDSU. That's another expansion of an area into organic. And he's got a graduate student and a technician here from the program. There's a couple of them. There's a technician that we got. He came in Sakshi here from Dr. Banerjee's lab. Sam Banerjee does agribiome research. He looks at the soil microbiome. We've also got Barney Geddes, who's looking at soil microbe interactions. He looks at soybeans and rhizobia as one of these key areas he looks at. Both of those faculty are doing research out of the research extension centers and collaborating with people out here and looking at the sustainability. So that's one thing we can look at on the breeding side. How can you breed those varieties that work in different microbiomes? And so there's really some cool things you can do. So we're looking to expand to that area. Richard, I have a quick question for you. So you mentioned about this blend variety that had a blander taste when it was grown on the east coast a little bit. Is that right? Yeah, it was in Maryland. So why do you think that was or what? Flavor, I have no idea. One of my biggest fears a few years ago, and I went to a barley meeting, a Malster and Brewer meeting out east, and I got accused of breeding the flavor out of barley. That was kind of interesting. And I won't even go into that story. But yeah, it's one of the hardest things you can breed for is flavor, because it's so subjective. Is it genetics or is it terroir? You look at grapes. That's the beauty of the mystery of grapes, right? The different years, different flavors, different locations. If you're developing a malt barley for a large company, man, it's got to taste the same every day, every year. You don't have that freedom. So one of the things we're gonna look at wheat is to look at the tannic acid levels. That's what you do in grapes. Will that impact the bitter flavor in wheat? So it's things we haven't really thought about. We're gonna, we're all in on this. So yeah. Any other questions? So do you think it's soil related between Maryland and North Dakota, or is that climatic? We just don't have enough data yet. And that's why we wanna grow these wheats at more locations. So next year we're gonna, right this year, I said we're in Vermont, New York, New Jersey, and Fargo. And we wanna expand it here with Steve, maybe some other Farm Breeder Club members. We're gonna go into Arizona next year and we're gonna look at that question. Is it terroir or is it genetics? And even the way you mill the wheat, we found stone milled Glen was much stronger in flavor than roller milled Glen, the traditional milling method. So there's a lot of questions. Like I said, if you can do it in craft beer, why can't you do it in wheat? Why doesn't every grocery store have a stone mill? And give you fresh, you grind coffee in the supermarket, why can't you do that with flour? I mean the best high-end bakeries and the best high-end restaurants have the mills right there in the restaurants. So at NDSU we invested in a stone mill and so did the Northern Crops Institute. So we're gonna be looking at those kind of things. And the Northern Plains, they own a stone mill and it's at Nicole's in Fargo. So we wanna include her in that research project too. You know, does a state mill in the elevator have a stone mill? I don't know. So. But that's a big, a new and up and coming thing is craft milling. There's a company in Vermont, new American mills that's selling these four-foot mills and it's becoming quite the thing, especially out east. We need some here. So, okay. Anything else? Do we get an orc to coat and she'd eat anything other than bland white bread? I don't know if they'll touch that one. I hope so. So. The Potential is a school lunch program. They want higher fiber. So, white wheat, we're looking at white wheat too. Yep, a little bit. Any other questions? Well, thank you. This is fun, you know, getting these kind of questions and thinking about these kind of activities and we're definitely excited about working in this area and expanding into that.