 Good morning and welcome to the 51st annual sugar beet research reporting session. My name is Mohammed Khan and I wear many hats. One of them is an extension sugar beet specialist for North Dakota State University and University of Minnesota. I also serve as secretary for the sugar beet research and education board and my main responsibility is to make sure that our growers are educated with the most recent and most up-to-date growers practices recommendations and since our growers are the fastest adoption of technology we ensure that these recommendations are applicable to our field situations. I would like to thank all our growers for funding our research. Thank you. Thank you very much. I would like to thank the irony board. The members are here today. Later today we will all of us who have had research funding we will be reporting on our research and for those of us who are CCA holders you will get your CU credits. Later on during your day at least three times we will have CU one for the morning session from seven to ten then another CU credits will be up at ten o'clock and then a final one will be up this afternoon for the afternoon session. This program here today is a joint venture between North Dakota State University and the University of Minnesota. We have sponsors the sugar beet research and education board of Minnesota and North Dakota and we would like to thank Sumitomo cooperation. They have been our sponsors when we are usually on the ground having their refreshments at this time and lunch they will continue to be our sponsor and they're already thinking about next year when we shall meet again in person. First this morning I would like to ask Mr Eric Ordman who's the chairman of the irony board to bid you welcome. Scott can you make Eric okay thank you Eric. Mr Eric Ordman has his BA from University of North Dakota and he has been a member of the board for the past 10 years. He's now the chairman of the board he's also his father was also a board member. We were working there together and now he's continuing the good job of taking care of the business for the sugar beet growers in North Dakota and Minnesota. Mr Eric Ordman. Thank you Mohamed good morning. On behalf of the members of the sugar beet research and education of board of Minnesota North Dakota I would like to welcome you as you all join us virtually. The sugar beet industry is a very vibrant and economically important industry in this region where over 55 percent of the sugar beets are produced and results over five billion dollars worth of economic activity. Our producers are strong proponents of research are very progressive and rapid adapters of technology. We are thankful to our researchers for consistently providing practical sustainable and economical solutions to our problems. Thank you for participating today as our researchers give their updates at the 51st annual research and reporting sessions. I hope you have a productive and educational meeting. Thank you. Thank you Eric. Next we will have Dr. Gregory Lardy. He's the vice president for agricultural affairs. The dean for the College of Agriculture Food Science and Natural Resources and the director for North Dakota Agricultural Experimental Station and NDSU Extension. Dr. Lardy. Thank you Mohamed. Good morning everyone. Welcome to this reporting session where you'll learn a lot more about some of the research that's going on across the two states here in the Red River Valley with relation to the sugar beet industry. As Eric mentioned the sugar beet industry is an incredibly important part of the agricultural framework and landscape of this region and contributes vital portions of economic development across this region. We're proud to be part of that the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station and NDSU Extension in partnership with the University of Minnesota has many different programs that we offer sugar beet growers. We're proud to be part of that industry and responsive to the needs of the industry. You're going to learn a lot more today about some of the work that's going on but everything from cacospora leaf spot work to herbicide resistant weeds to increases in efficiency that have allowed your industry to continue to thrive in this difficult environment. So we're excited for the work that's being done. We're happy to be partners with you in furthering the mission of your industry and helping you identify and find solutions to problems across the region. And we look forward to those continued partnerships with you as we continue to work to increase efficiency of production and use technology to further advance the sugar beet industry in this region. So Muhammad thank you for the opportunity to be with you this morning and give a brief welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much sir. Then we have University of Minnesota Representative Dr. Mike Schmidt who's the Associate Dean for the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources, Natural Resources Sciences at University of Minnesota. Dr. Schmidt. Good morning Muhammad and good morning everyone else. I've also had the privilege of serving on the North Dakota Minnesota Sugar Beet Research and Education Board for the past 20 years. And I think it goes without saying that this year's reporting session is a first. While I think we're all fine with not having to contend with icy roads or blowing snow this year to attend today's session, I suspect I suspect you share my disappointment in not having the interactions with your colleagues, the speakers, and your friends that just happen to show up here every January. No doubt you will still learn of the data that was collected and the recommendations that our university specialists will be making via technology platform. But those hallway and dining space conversations cannot be duplicated on Zoom. University of Minnesota along with North Dakota State University continues its commitment to you the Sugar Beet producers and associated industries. While our operational efficiencies were been challenged this past year, our research did get conducted in a timely manner. I ask for your continued patience. This winter, as Drs. Kahn, Peters, Sikor, Botel, et cetera, share their educational efforts with you this winter and into the spring as we get through this challenging time. Thanks for participating in this session today. Have a great day. Thank you, Dr. Schmidt. Thank you all. We have about over 200 people here already. I know at Southern Minnesota, we have a group of people there in their boat room. So if you are all by yourself or you're together in a group, that's the way to go. Since this is our first virtual meeting, we decided to use this opportunity to have our colleagues from Europe to give us an update as to the Sugar Beet research and the progress over in Europe. I thought it will also be fair for us to share with us the situation in the U.S. So we'll start this morning by sharing what's happening in the U.S.A. Okay, so what's the situation of the Sugar Beet in the United States? In the U.S., first of all, cool greetings from North Dakota. Two years ago, we were about minus 24 in February, and this year we are in a warm spell. You never know what kind of a weather you're going to get, but we never complain. This year we're complaining because it's too warm. We are a sugar-loving nation. We love our sugar. Each one of us in the United States consume about 68 tons of sugar per year. In addition to that, we make sure we use our soda or beverages, where we use sugar in the form of high sucrose corn syrup, and a little bit of honey. And syrups on our pancakes. We can produce all the sugar we need in the United States. We are fortunate to have both sugar beet and sugarcane. Today I'll be focusing more on sugarcane. We produce 85% of the sugar we need, and about 15% is imported from 40 different countries. From Australia to Mexico to Brazil. And our largest importer is from our next door neighbor in Mexico. The producers in all these countries from which we import our sugar get the exact same price that our producers in the United States get. We are a very large and diverse country, people-wise as well as geographically, and in the map you can see I have the arrow kind of dividing us into eastern and western United States. In the eastern United States we are lucky to have enough rainfall, and in the western areas they have more heat, less rain, so they use irrigation. We have more or less sprinkler irrigation and farrow irrigation. Over the past 10 to 15 years we're moving away from farrow irrigation to sprinkler irrigation because of the fact that the areas where they have farrow irrigation they have also been blessed with oil, so they have more income that they're utilizing into the area of agriculture, which is a good sign. Sugar beet in the U.S., we are able to drive our pulp, especially in the American crystal area, and export it to a lucrative market in Japan. We also use the molasses as animal feed or in making alcohol, industrial alcohol. And of course we have sugar that is delivered to commercial markets. One of the commonalities of production in the U.S. more or less is crop rotation. In North Dakota and Minnesota typical rotation will be soybean, wheat or barley, corn or maize, and soybean. We also have other crops, edible beans, potato, sunflower, and about 30 other crops that we are able to rotate with. This helps us in managing our pest and diseases and also helps us with preventing erosion. What typically happens in the year is that in the fall the land is usually prepared and early in spring depending on where you are, the United States. If you're in the western United States you may start planting around March. In North Dakota and Minnesota you're lucky to get into the field in April or May where you started a final land preparation. Then you do planting. The average farm size is about 250 hectares. This is for sugar beet production. The farms will be much larger. Most of our growers in this area have about 2,000 to 3,000 acres, but sugar beet is about on 700 acres or about 200 to 250 hectares. We plant in April or May. We are 100% glyphosate tolerant sugar beet, so two or three applications of glyphosate in most areas will control our weeds. Then we are ready to use our fungicides to control leaf spot. One of the unique things in the U.S. is that we can still use aircraft to apply pesticides and because of our large field size this is very helpful to us. This is not very common in Europe. Very quickly we have a very short growing season. We plant in April and May and by July or August. Sometimes the second week of August we usually start our pre-pile and from the 4th of October we start our campaign. It's usually 24 hours per day harvest and when the conditions are favorable our producers in North Dakota and Minnesota are able to harvest about 17 million tons of beets in about 10 days and then they will place that into storage. As I indicated earlier we are blessed with cold weather and we make use of that cold weather. So we can process beets from, we typically process beets from August through June one year meant that went to July just to show us that it can be done but we prefer to be done earlier so we have enough time to get their factory ready for the next sugar beet crop. Weeds, weeds have been one of the courses of sugar beet production from the beginning of time or which is about 222 years ago when we first started producing beets in Europe. Because of the fact that sugar beets are short, weeds usually take advantage of them and in North Dakota and Minnesota where we have very high seed population weeds can very easily take over your crop. With advent of rung drop ready sugar beet or glyphosate tolerant sugar beet starting in 2007 and becoming more or less widespread in 2010 you can see the most pictures are pictures of sugar beet fields with about two or three applications of glyphosate and that has done a really good job for weed control and if you look at my field for some reason there are no weeds I think there is Jim Morn and others in the picture they usually come early and stay late and when they leave they're usually in a very good mood that's probably because they make sure that we don't have any of the weeds in the field it's all runged up ready. We have been able to do things that we thought we will never be able to do we are using script till and in some areas no till because of the sugar beet technology of using glyphosate this helps immensely in conserving moisture in reducing erosion in kind of conserving our wildlife and still having improved soil fertility. One has to be careful however this is a technology that has to be used with care we have to be following a holistic program in that we have crop rotations and use different modes of herbicides. I showed you a picture early of this gentleman Tyler he's much taller than I am and these are weeds palma amaranth in the Colorado area so you do not want resistant weeds and weeds like this in your sugar beet fields. One of the biggest issue that all of us have to contend with throughout the world is that when we use pesticides after time for the most part we have resistance the higher the selection pressure the faster the resistance. For weeds we know we have over 200 plant species that are resistant to 22 of the 25 known herbicide modes of action and in our neck of the woods we have glyphosate resistant water hemp we have ragweed we have kosher so unlike you in Europe that can probably use ALS technology to manage weeds we cannot use that technology over in the US. What are the problems we have? This little looking fly on the left hand side that looks like a house fly picture wing fly looks very harmless but it lays eggs and very quickly those eggs will develop into larvae and the larvae will damage the beets as you can see in the picture you have stand loss and heavy pressure will result in reducing your population your stand and your yield. Dr. Botel will discuss today the methods of managing the root maggot we've been using a lot of insecticide he will discuss what we are doing in that particular area. We also have powdery mildew especially in places like Idaho we still use sulfur and only we have some new modes of action we have resistance issue and we must use sulfur with our triazoles. Our breeders have done a really good job throughout the world of giving us better resistant varieties for powdery mildew as well as rhizomania. Now of course as you all know we brought sugar beets from Europe to the US we brought not only the crop but we also brought the diseases and one of those of course we have rhizomania and we're just wondering who are our visitors who brought those that particular pathogen. Here again our breeders have done a really good job with rhizomania resistance and at this point in time we very rarely see the symptoms of that of that particular pathogen or disease in our field. For those of you have never gone to Idaho I encourage you to come visit it's a beautiful place. However within the beauty you have some really damaging disease there you have beet-colytop virus that is transmitted by the leaf hopper and it's only because again the work of our breeders and the work of our researchers who are able to use neodycotinoids to manage this disease in the western areas. You will hear more today what happens when you when our producers cannot get to use some of these pesticides. So the top picture on the right hand side shows the symptoms of beet-colytop virus and the picture below shows you plots that has resistant varieties. So we use a combination of resistance and insecticide as seed treatment to manage this disease. We also have lots of rods we have rhizobtonia rhododaphanomyces rhodod foma rhodod and we are using here again resistance and fungicides. You will hear more about that today from Dr. Ashok Chanda and his team and of course sarcosper lispod. Here we're using fungicides and again host resistance to manage this disease. We will be discussing more of that today as well. In southern Minnesota one of the areas where you have olive fields have rhizomania as well as sarcosper lispod. This picture was taken in 2020 at the end of the towards the end of the growing season and you cannot see a single plant with symptoms of rhizomania or any lispod symptoms and here again this is hard work done by you the researchers and debaters thank you thank you very much for making this possible and as I said earlier our growers are probably the fastest adopter of technology they use what we have and they use it well because of this they had a really good crop in 2020 and we're looking forward to continue this success in the years to come. Now I discussed earlier that we are our breeders were developing resistance to rhizomania and to sarcosper lispod the rhizobtonia and powdery mildew. However what happens some of the times is that when we are developing improved varieties sometimes we lose some genes that were preventing other diseases that were already present in our soil. This is a picture from the Crookston area a four front more or less shows a field that was planted with a variety that was susceptible to fissurium you can see the damage there that variety was very resistant to rhizomania but unfortunately it was not resistant to fissurium. More recently we found another disease that has been around and has affected over 200 crops sclerotinia or white mole which is common in canola or all seed rape and other crops has now also been found on sugar beets in some areas uh entire fields usually when it infects the plants it infects the entire field 90 to 100 percent of the plants. So we have to be careful of this we have to be cognizant that there are times when we can get unintended consequences that can be detrimental. Now as I indicated earlier we are meeting today because of COVID-19. We know that science and we are we are all involved with science it has not always been accepted there's a story of Galileo Galilei who was not believed in the early uh around 1440s in the heliocentric system when he talked about it that is everything all the planets and the earth revolved around the sun nobody believed him he was right good thing about it he was a little bit older in age so he was not killed. Over time we have been able to develop transgenic technology for example we have glyphosate tolerant sugar beet it's acceptable in the US but it's not acceptable in the EU and please note it was developed in the EU. Over time I am hoping that technology will be accepted especially when they are proven to be effective safe useful practical and economical because of COVID the world is more or less at a standstill we're meeting here today virtually. Our researchers again have done a phenomenal job and the researchers are from all over the world they're not from one particular country and they were able to develop a vaccine they developed this vaccine here again using science using technology messenger RNA you can everybody in the world will like to use this vaccine we're not getting it fast enough we're not hearing any serious complaint about this is using science this is using science in a way that is unacceptable no the science has been done the ethics has been looked at and the vaccine will become available larger scale so that we can all get back to work I am hoping that the world will be able to look at one way where science will be used for the good of all of us and we can use that same science to work together in the US in Europe and worldwide so that when we use the science it will be done it in an ethical manner it will be in an economical socially and environmentally acceptable manner not only for sugar beets and sugar but for war food security because our numbers are increasing as we speak we're over 7.6 million people and we all have the envious task of producing food rather cheaply for all our people our charge today will be making sure we use science for the good of humanity thank you and I'll be happy to answer any questions Mohammed yes sir yes I do have one here it's more of a comment than a question from Tom Peters Mohammed several biotech traits developed using mRNA technology are in development so we'll see what happens whether they get approval at some point down the road thank you thank you Tom as I'm saying we shall use this opportunity to show that science can be used safely effectively and ethically not only for vaccines but for more or less improving food production worldwide as well as human health as well as animal health as well as animal production there is going to be a vast scope for science at least for the next decade or two let's use this opportunity to work together to kind of get to that area as indicated to you earlier we will use this opportunity to get our colleagues over from Europe to listen to participate and also to present this morning we are fortunate to have professor Annika Trin Malin she's the head of the Institute of the sugar beet research at the University of Göttingen Germany and she will be telling us today her story about sugar beet research at the IFC over in Germany Dr Malin whenever you are ready I'm ready thank you very much Mohammed and thank you very much for inviting me to your session it's a very exciting opportunity for me to present the research we are doing here in Germany on sugar beet to you so I will share my screen with you so Mohammed you asked me to present our research here at the IFC in Göttingen and I have parted my presentation in two parts and the first part will be a quite general overview on the IFC and the second part will be focused on research on digital technologies in sugar beet cultivation so the Institute of sugar beet research is located in the city of Göttingen and we are an affiliated Institute of the University of Göttingen and our focus at IFC is research for sustainable productivity growth and for global competitiveness of sugar beet and for this purpose we perform technical and scientific research in different areas and these areas are agronomy plant physiology phytopathology system analysis sensors and data analysis furthermore we coordinate national and international research and development tries here at the IFC and we perform several third-party funded research projects here at the IFC funded by different funding institutions a very important aspect of our everyday work is knowledge transfer along different partners and I will present this to you a little bit more in detail later and we are involved in education at the University of Göttingen at the faculty of agricultural science along different levels of qualification like the bachelor level the master level and also PhD students. This is the structure of the IFC in the current situation we have our institute head of the institute with cooperation and contracts public relations and organizations and then we have the scientific departments in our institute and these scientific departments are the department of coordination with Evan Ladevik as the head and the main topic of the department of coordination is technical research with national and international coordinated feed tries here the variety tries and plant protection tries are located in the department of agronomy with Dr. Heinz Josef Koch who will also present to you later on topics like sugar beet incorporation fertilization are are handled also the reduction of beet damages at harvest soil structure and tillage and a very important topic here in Europe and especially also in Germany is mechanical wheat control because as you all know and as Mormont already presented we do not have the round up technology and glyphosate tolerant technology here in Europe. In a department of physiology with Professor Christa Hoffmann as the head most important topics are yield formation and yield potential technological quality for processing broad stress and due to extreme weather events is also a very important topic here in Europe we had two very broad and very hot years in 2020 and 2019 and another important topic is storability and evaluation of genetic and genotypic variability as a selection criteria of varieties with positive storability traits. The department of phytopatology is performed by Professor Dr. Mark Fireman and here all the important plant disease aspects are handled. The department of phytopatology develops diagnostically to to spider says and plant protection strategies very important topics currently here in Germany in Europe are virus yellowing and leaf diseases like the cospora but also new challenges like the syndrome bas-ri-ches SPR are very critical in Germany and research for that is very important. I'm the head of the department sensor and data analysis and here we do research on position agriculture technologies and digital phenotyping and I will present this to you in detail later on. In the department system analysis headed by Dr. Nicole Stockfish the farm survey the German farm survey on sugar beet cultivation is performed every year and here together with the sugar companies and the grower association every year more than 300 farmers are asked to fulfill this farm survey and provide information about growing their sugar beets in practice. In the department of system analysis also the evaluation of the application of plant protection compounds in Germany is performed for statistical analysis of yeah chemical plant protection in practice. Yeah this is our current team it's not the most recent picture because you know in corona times it's not possible to meet in such a form but currently we have 63 people half of them are scientific staff and half of them are technical staff. Yeah how we are organized and embedded into the structure of yeah of the German and European and international sugar sectors so the IFZ and the topic of IFZ is scientific research. We do an intensive exchange to our European partner within the so-called Cobra Network and we are in very close relation. We are the coordination board at the IFZ regarding technical research and the information chain from technical research to the extension and then to the grower goes over the coordination board where the original working groups and growers association the sugar industries and others are involved and by this the scientific benefit from the IFZ goes directly to the sugar beet farmers and growers. We are as well partners of the IRRB and international society for knowledge exchange on sugar beet but I also will provide you some information on that later on. Yeah what is the coordination board here in Germany? I mentioned it on the slide before here the we have a cooperation of the regional working units from the growing regions in Germany. We meet two times per year at the IFZ in Götting or in a digital way and we discuss and run technical research projects on the national and international levels and here especially the product development regarding varieties but also product development regarding plant protection compounds is supported by this coordination board and we have different studies groups in the coordination boards with topics like variety, plant protection, agromony and fiat tries and the idea is that the experts on these different topics come together several times per year and discuss and plan and evaluate the trials and the results to provide relevant information to the farmers and to the growers in a very fast and very efficient way. Yeah the IRRB I mentioned it two slides before it's a it's a non-profit organization we are associated in and we are active in and also Mohamed and he's several colleagues from the US are active here and it's also very important to work in these kind of non-profit organizations the head or the seat of the IRRB is in Brussels but the office is here in Götting currently the IRRB has 350 members from 24 countries and the mission of the IRRB is knowledge transfer we are different congresses workshops seminars and there are different study groups on topics like agriculture engineering or plant diseases and plant protection or communication technologies or storage and it's yeah it's a very very positive tool and very positive platform to live exchange and to get information on recent research on sugar beet technologies and sugar beet growing. Yeah coming to the second part of my presentation and here I want to present you some insights about our research on digital technologies at the IofZ and this research is mainly based in third-party funded projects and we have currently two most prominent projects which is the Finnerop project and the Palmer space project and here we have research and an experimental field site for plant protection and digital technologies in sugar beet we collaborate here with different partners other universities and research institutions but also with startups with companies so it's really a platform for research on digital technologies for sugar beet and important topics here are a site-specific weed control and weed detection mechanical and robotic weed detection but also the assessment of plant diseases by drone technologies and cameras and on the next slide I would like to present the potential of these technologies to you so we do a lot of research on drones and artificial intelligence for precise and objective high throughput phenotyping so we develop and use these kind of technologies to monitor our plant during the vegetation period and to assess different kind of parameters for the plant and what we can perform already is counting and sizing for example on the field the homogeneity assessment I'm sorry the presentation is messed up we can perform homogeneity assessment on the field we are already able to perform weed monitoring and to differentiate the crop plant the sugar beet plant from weed plants so we can do a species mapping and by this semantic mapping is possible as well which is very useful and helpful for variety trials for example and a very important topic is the assessment of stress and diseases like the monitoring of the cospora leaf crop leaf spot and crop stands and also the assessment of individual objects from plant material so how do we do this methodology here is an application this scenario on this assessment of disease incidence and disease severity this is the work from a PhD student our barito here at the IFZ and he performed several trials last year and this year with Joan and the camera setup he's using a multi-spectrum camera to monitor the crop stand multi-temporal via the vegetation periods and the first step is to assess the single plant so assess the location of each sugar beet plant in the field to use this information to allocate cospora leaf spots to a single plant in the next step and here he is currently working on a model on an algorithm who uses on one side the rgb information the multi-spectrum information but also 3d information on the on the elevation model of the crop stand and by this he is able to identify spots and to assess the disease incidence with very high accuracy the second parameter of relevance he is working on right now is the assessment of disease severity in a non-invasive way and here he's using machine learning algorithms and he's training the classifier to be able to separate healthy leaf tissue from diseased leaf tissue also in an automatic way and here currently the accuracy depends still a little bit on the disease severity but the model works quite well and he's able to assess the disease severity with an accuracy of about 90% depending on the image and the image quality but here this research is still going on and we hope to provide a model with a higher accuracy based on the drone images in the future and what we realize in this research is that a very important aspect is really the image quality and before you can apply your algorithm and your classifier so it's better to have a high spatial resolution so a high pixel size to assess in a very sensitive way small sacrospera leaf spots in an early stage another application scenario is robotic weeding where we do a lot of research in the department of agronomy and those in the and data department here you see a video of a prototype from a startup called farming revolution and this robot is a platform for mechanical hoeing and the robot is also equipped with a camera and the camera takes pictures of the sugar beet crop stand and the rose and with an algorithm this platform can sorry for that that platform can assess the sugar beet plant and can differentiate the sugar beet plant from wheat plants and can perform a very localized application of the hoeing technology or it is even thinkable in the future that you can apply a herbicide in a very precise way as a spot application so coming to my third and last application scenario there are also 3d technologies we are working on so we use different kind of 3d techniques like laser scanning or stereo cameras to assess the geometry of objects and here you see two examples on the left side a digital elevation model of the field topography to assess this information and to guide further autonomous driving for example and on the right side you see the volume assessment of the sugar beet clump by drone images and here we had a challenge a 3d challenge this year and compared different 3d technologies for an accurate assessment of the geometry of objects yeah and to transfer all this knowledge and all these aspects i mentioned already we are also active in teaching and at the end of my presentation i would like to present this slide to you about a master module we provide at the university of gutting but it is an open module it's called agribusiness sugar beet and maybe this is of interest also for you or also for your young scientists and young workers because we have here an open international course it's in English as well and you will get information on in two weeks on sugar beet everything what is important about sugar beets about genetics and breeding and about morphology and physiology about cultivation and engineering pests and diseases also in digital technologies and so it's really a crash course for agronomists on sugar beet growing in sugar beet cultivation with an international teaching team from the i of z from the university of gutting and also from our co-pry partners in europe and the participants can be young master students these are also phd students and young employees from companies so it's a quite colorful mixture of different people and we always have um yeah international students here they are very welcome so maybe this would be of interest for you as well yeah and with this i would like to finish my very short presentation about the i of z and research of the i of z i would like to thank you for your attention and questions are welcome i i have time for one quick question thank you professor anne katrin um using your sensors can you determine uh or identify the presence of sarcospera before symptoms are observed yeah this is a question which uh always come up so this is very very difficult in the lab on the laboratory scale we are able to assess very early changes due to disease infestation but in the on the field scale currently it is not possible so the technology especially hyperspectral imaging is able to do a pre-symptomatic early detection but the transfer from the lab in controlled conditions to the field is still missing for that thank you thank you very much on behalf of everybody else thank you yeah you're welcome and all attendees if you have questions feel free to ask them send the questions in uh dr botel will arrange for you to get those answers from dr um professor malin thank you thank you our next speaker will be professor mark stevens who's the head of science the bbro the british beat research organization in norwich today he will share with us best in disease issues and advances of sugar beet in europe professor mark stevens thank you mohammed many thanks indeed for the kind introduction it's a great pleasure for me to be with you today and to give you a sort of a european overview of some of the pest and disease issues and challenges and advances to where we're making i appreciate that i have a relatively short space of time but i will do my best to to highlight these and as you will see as i go through the presentation many of the issues that we are faced with in europe are very similar to some of the the issues that are causing the problems that you're having to deal with in north america and so when you look at the key areas that we are trying to tackle uh folly diseases are key we've already heard from um mohammed and and catering the importance and consequences of sycospora and i'll talk about that and that's an increasing problem potentially influenced and driven further particularly in Europe by climate change i'm very aware that aphids and virus yellows are not a major problem in north america and probably more so down in california but here in europe uh following an incredibly mild uh last winter and the loss of the neonicotinoid sea treatments which i'll come on to in a moment have caused some unbelievable big challenges for us particularly in france and the uk parts of belgium the netherlands and germany to name but a few uh we also have challenges with nematodes whether that's free living cyst uh and uh there are root not nematodes again i'll touch on that later uh rhizomania uh that is more of a common global challenge that we're having to deal with uh and there will always be those seedling diseases it was interesting reading your program for today the challenges atheromyces again soreness use are clear challenges uh and if we're not challenged with seedling disease at beginning we also as mohammed has already highlighted the root rods the rhizoptonias the violet root rods of this world are there to cause us some challenges at the end of the season just at harvest and pre-pile or going in direct to the factory as often happens in the uh the european context i i i share some data this is specifically from the uk but when it comes to crop protection clearly we should be very proud of what we've achieved collectively uh that's working closely uh with uh the uh the seed breeders to develop those varieties to rhizom and nematodes folic diseases ALS technology whether that's conventional or GM approaches that you have in north america we have had the tools of the neonicotinoids and fungicides and it's made a major difference alongside tactical agonomy and novel approaches to limit the build-up of pest and diseases that have meant that growers have really been able to benefit wherever they grow the crop trying to generate excellent yields and sugar production but as we go forward clearly there are many challenges that faces these may be slightly nuanced and different in different countries but loss and restrictions of pesticides particularly more recently in europe as i've already highlighted we lost a through a blanket ban the use of the neonicotinoid seed treatments in 2018 that was an EU decision and these were particularly effective of controlling up to 15 different pests uh and associated virus diseases when it came to virus yellows uh clearly uh we need a greater integrated pest management or disease management strategy to keep on top of these problems and there is much work ongoing throughout as I said collaborations with breeders the ag chem industry and some of the techniques and tools that and katharine has already just demonstrated with sensors and opportunities to monitor crops to give that early advance but what's interesting the loss of the neonicotinoids in 2018 i'm sure many of you are aware because of the challenges that we've been faced with in 2021 there will be 13 countries that have been given emergency authorization for usage in 2021 to try and keep on top of some of these problems uh we could particularly specifically with regard to virus yellows uh increasing risk of resistance we see that globally with succospor and the challenges with the trials all strawberry lorans and other products that are available and that is clearly uh focusing the mind again once again having those abilities to identity divide identify the disease early using the right approaches with the right varieties really crucial uh and the appropriate developing improved biosecurity measures here here in in europe uh we are keeping our close eye on one or two novel issues things like beet weevils in austria and parts of poland and germany uh that are causing some quite large problems and plant loss at an early stage and again things like bass rushess which is not a new disease but as thing as climate changes uh and local seasonal impacts change we're having to tackle that and try and think of novel approaches to clearly build and ensure it doesn't cause growers significant year loss and there's also a big emphasis here in europe about uh soil health and improving soil health uh with appropriate measures and looking for soil indicators uh about looking for healthy soils and how we can maintain that particularly as we go into the future so i thought i would pick on one or two examples to to show you the challenges uh and i make no apologies virus yellows is an error of my personal research for about 30 years now uh and clearly when we had the use in europe uh of the those neonicotinoids hemidoclopid thymothoxum or clothionidinin they did an excellent job of maintaining low levels of virus uh but it is a disease complex of up to three viruses transmitted by myzus persecuta pato aphids which can cause losses of up to 50 percent now here in the uk specifically uh we do have a forecast tool that we deploy each year it's run by some of my former colleagues when i was based at often said research and it takes into consideration uh temperature growing practice and available sea treatments here in the uk we have a very maritime climate uh having said that we did get down to the dizzy heights of minus seven degrees since uh celsius two nights ago uh but compared to north dakota we have incredibly mild winters which enables these pests to survive quite easily if we don't get cold nights and frosty conditions we use the forecast and we will continue to revise this to give indications of threats of of the risk of virus yellows and we've been fortunate to have this model which has been revised over uh the last 50 years to take into consideration the changes in in tools that growers have uh but the actual chart in front of you shows the potential situations the dotted line is the forecast at the beginning of march each year just before growers sow their crop of the risk of virus yellows and the levels of impact it could have the solid uh blue line is the level of virus yellows that could actually be achieved with the best pest management uh strategies and really since 1995 until 2018 we had the sea treatments and regardless of what may have happened with a series of mild winters actually they were incredibly valuable and growers used in excess of 90 percent of the area to protect their crop hence why we have the current challenges of virus yellows with the lack of those treatments and the catch up they were playing to try and develop the tools and varieties of the future that can now afford that protection i also put this slide in we we monitor at key locations in the uk 15 locations across the whole of the uk these are 12.2 meter suction traps and what we're finding also with uh changes in climate uh the milder the winter the earlier those aphids fly and the greater the risk to the crop uh the red dot that you can see that reflects what happened in 2020 uh and as i said it caused many problems and actually aphids were flying before the crop had actually emerged but if you just add one degree to that you can see what it does it brings those aphids into the crop at least two to three weeks earlier and here in europe trying to combat that with limited armory as clearly causing us some issues so we continue to strive to develop those varieties unfortunately it's unlike risomania where we have the rz1 gene we're relying on many minor genes to be able to do that and this is one of the trials that we've done in the uk but these are replicated across europe again and Catherine has nicely indicated the role and the importance of the iirb and the working groups particularly the pest and disease working group and this is one of the trials where we've been working with all the breeders in europe with their most elite material where we can actually hand and oculate different genetics and trying to identify tolerance and partial resistance to the different yellowing viruses and what's really encouraging and exciting is there are some really useful varieties that are coming along that ultimately will provide those solutions so it doesn't matter if it's virus or other diseases we continue to look for a whole host of different novel insecticides or fungicides clearly there's a push for greater integrated pest disease management and that collaboration to bring along very much like you have with the USDA in the states the resistance and torrent material that goes into elite grow of varieties mature plant resistance for some of the pest is important sugar beet is very good at looking after itself as it grows and the changes in some of the compounds within sugar beet and this could be a strategy to be deployed into the future new ways novel ways of agonomy and how we can probably deflect or push and pull insects away from the crop and then deploy biocontrol strategies and clearly on farm hygiene as a early measure straightforward measure by great growers to sort of complement all that is crucial that's enough about virus as an example as I said we too in Europe just like your good selves in North America are having to deal with a whole host of foliar diseases we will tend to rely on the trials holes and strawberry loins for control which do on the whole a very good control of things like brown rust and powder mildew again in different countries were able to operate different warning systems and modeling strategies clearly so cost per other challenges as all and again particularly in the UK you know so cost per 10 years was really not a big problem for us at all but since the last sort of three or four years I would say so cost per is really ramped up and the problem of resistance to the trials holes and strawberry loins is making us really think about the strategies and how we can manage this good agonomy practice linked with future tolerant and partially resistant varieties with new fungicides that hopefully we can get registered to tackle it we all very used to those sort of things to deal with that and that's why that photograph that Mohamed showed earlier was also really crucial we also have vanmilleria foma and stemphilium 2 which was identified in the Netherlands in 2007 and continues to challenge us for controlling it what what we try to do is as I said work on the varieties we're fortunate there was some really big differences in some of the varieties we can undertake inoculated trials to understand that we look at the relationship between the variety the fungicide and the disease I can do that in close memory to it again the sensors and the tools that Anne Catterin nicely described both nationally and at an IARB level are improving all the time and we're getting really quite excited about some of the outputs that to make some practical levels and also some of the tools and sensors rather than waiting to see spots on the leaves a whole host of diagnostics have been developed now that we can be used in samplers to enable us to be one step ahead and understand what's going on so really quite exciting times across the board we too have things like nematodes we rely heavily again on tolerance the beats us nematode but free living nematode and root not nematodes causes challenges and there's a whole host of work going on over here to do that and I thought just really the last sort of technical slide is the one thing that we're all faced with is rhizomania I think it's a testament to the breeding by all the companies and the incorporation of rz1 and rz2 to tackle that but just like we're seeing with other viruses across the globe they have a the ability to mutate and change so it's really important that we continue to try and tackle that and limit the impact of changing populations and rhizomania so my last slide future challenges I think these all affect us in different ways we need to be thinking about alternative approaches in Europe one of the benefit of climate change is going off and so earlier and leave the crop in the ground for longer but that has consequences particularly for pest and diseases and as we go forward it's all about management of specific varieties and real-time data to deliver real-time on fine decisions and decisions to maximize growth yields so I hope you hope that's a very whistle-stop tour of some of the challenges that were faced in Europe some are generic more specific but many thanks for your attention and if you've got a quick question I'll do my very best to try and answer so many thanks indeed thank you mark one very quick question as Mr Cedric Royer is getting his presentation ready we've heard over here about Stemphilium and our managers and producers would like you to kind of tell us a little bit more about how many countries it's been affected in Europe and what treatments you have I know you have some of the triazos working very well can you tell us a little bit about your experience thank you Hi so it started to to show itself in the Netherlands so the work of Brahms IRS has clearly been instrumental in yes it's exactly in the UK we didn't actually identify until 2013-14 and actually so far here in the UK with my own personal experience although we see at very low levels the strategies and the combination of broad spectrum mixes of fungicides seems to be doing the job but clearly varietal tolerance and resistance will be crucial alongside fungicide approaches it may be worth looking at some of the work that's coming out of the Netherlands for that so more specific approach but as I said with climate change these these are some of the challenges we're faced with thanks mark you want to just stop sharing please so then you have that our next speaker this morning this afternoon depending on where you're at will be mr. Cedric Royer he is from the institute technique they'll have better have headquarters is in Paris in France and he will share with us wheat control of sugar beat in France strategies strategy and possibilities for the future mr. Royer you can start sharing whenever you are ready sir thank you hello everybody I am Cedric Royer I work at ITB the French Institute for sugar meat I am in charge of the plant protection product today my presentation is wheat control in sugar meat in France strategy and possibilities for the future I have divided my presentation into three main parts chemical herbicide, mechanical herbicide and ways for the future first of all you can see the situation of reading in France in 2020 the two first treatments weren't very efficient because the soil was too dry a lot of problems for emergence of sugar bean a lot of when before the third treatments and mechanical reading was possible at the end of the spring new challenges for the first year no chemical on the strip three or five meters near human houses here you can see a survey made by ITB each year 6000 of fields of sugar meats are recorded 77% of satisfactory in grain 23% are medium in yellow and 6% 6% in red not satisfactory the main reason for not satisfactory fields are timing between two treatments it's too long soil to dry treatments stopped too early not enough mechanical reading big worth of cannopodium in summer bad choice of product to summarize conditions and positioning treatments such as dosage of product and mechanical reading first for wheat control in France about 170 euros per hectare for chemical product about 200 dollars in 2020 which which are responsible here cannopodium is about 50% of not satisfactory fields it's difficult to destroy them when the spring is right sira fonas about 20% lolmoo alomi 10% there are lots of resistant plant now you can see some picture of sugar here you can see field with too many long water here fields with too many permanent roots and now filled without weeds it's better now you can see the traditional chemical reading in France we do a treatment after sowing in the emergency in about 20% of fields the different treatments are against cannopodium mercurialism there are about four or five treatments we stop the reading when the canopy is about 70% of area the different active substances are panmedifam, etothymesate, metametron, lenacyl, tomazone, or trifluousulfuron methyl in this slide you can see different means of action today we use different active substances the red circle are the product using sugar beet in France the different means of action enables us to manage the risk of resistance here you can see two tables with efficacy of different active substances on the first one we study the effect of one active substance of the left on different ways in the second table we combinated two active substances in green the efficacy is good orange the efficacy is medium and in red it's not satisfactory now the mechanical reading in 2008 the French government passed a law to reduce the use of herbicide in crops the this law wasn't successful in 2018 there is a new project ecofito 2 the aim is to decrease herbicide use this has led us to look for alternative reading methods for ITB there are two aims to reduce the use of herbicide and keep the seeds clean but chemical treatments remain indispensable at the beginning of the crop both we have a different solution to reduce herbicide the first idea is to use the traditional hole you can see the picture on this slide in this graph we can see the efficiency of the reading there are three different strategies on the left of the bar chart there are five chemical components it's the standard of the farmer the result is seven out of ten it's the past level it means that 85 percent of the weeds are destroyed by the by the reading in the middle we can see four chemical components and one passage of traditional hole the result is eight out of ten we manage to decrease the number of chemical components and the result is good for the last strategy on the white side we can see three chemical components in two passages of traditional hole the result is not good because there are too many weeds in the world the traditional hole cannot work in the world with a traditional hole we can only reduce the use of herbicide by 20 percent the goal is to reduce more we need to use other techniques and other machines there are two ways we do chemical components only on the world the aim is to treat the world 15 centimeters in width with localized boom or combined chemical and mechanical machine the second way is different we work with a mechanical machine when the sugar beads have four leaves or with resta or rotary hoe or prefleur machine at the beginning of the course we do two or three traditional chemical equipment the aim is to create a difference in vegetation between sugar beads and weeds the term avenir seven will be the next show at itb the 6th of may in central valdevoir in france there will be dynamic demonstration and test with different machines here we can see the strategy for a ls sugar beet the aim is to do two treatments instead five treatments today in each treatment the aim is to mix ls inhibitor plus plus traditional product the first treatment begins when the kenopodium have two leaves and the second treatment is about 14 days later we must find the right partners for the ls inhibitor if ls increases efficacy enables us simplification for farmers the duty cfi treatment frequency index in the number of treatments presents resistant problems but today no variety varieties are homologated in France thank you for your attention thank you doctor Royer thank you very much we have time for a few quick questions number one over in the us we also did a lot of mechanical control and when we did our mechanical control because of the fact we have a lot of rhizoptonia in our soil when we till the soil and the soil went to the crong of the plants we had lots of rhizoptonia crong rot are you absorbing this over in france and do you know if it's also happening in other parts of europe where they're using more mechanical weed control i know you don't have as much rhizoc as us here your comments there are no uh relation between uh in france between reading mechanical reading get uh over problems uh no no no no problem with mechanical reading get uh over problems okay all right thank you everyone you may need to look for it especially in those areas where you have a little bit more rhizoc and my last question comment and in europe you you're kind of saying you want to use less pesticides which is a good thing once it can be justified but you're using more mechanical weed control where you whereby you're using more fossil fuel you're doing more cultivation so you may probably have more erosion how do we balance this use of pesticides versus the use of more mechanical weed control well today today the priority is to reduce chemicals inside uh i think uh erosion uh perhaps it's uh another problem and it will be a problem in the future well thank you very much i hope with your conviso system uh you can probably use the system to control your weeds and you don't have to use as much mechanical cultivation and eventually you can probably have even more intercropping with other crops thank you very much sir our final speaker for this session will be dr. Heinz Joseph Koch he's from the agronomy department at the institute of sugar beet resort or i of z at the university of guttingen in germany he has agreed to share with you plant and soil challenges and progress dr. Koch okay thank you mohammed for your kind introduction and generally for inviting me to give this talk the topics of my talk are listed here in this outline i will mainly cover the topics crop rotation tillage and cover crops but before doing so i will give a short overview on important EU and national regulations impacting crop production at least several aspects of the summit they've been already tackled regarding pesticide use i will end up with some remarks on future agronomic challenges in sugar beet cultivation what about regulations there are national regulations which are usually based on EU common agricultural policy rules and these rules have to be mandatory fulfilled to get subsidies by the farmers the first topic is that at least three different main crops have been grown by a farmer on his land each year and each of these crops has to cover at least 15 percent of the whole arable farmland the main target of this rule is to preserve the soil carbon stock the second topic is sorry for this there's some some automatic in this i will try to stop this the next topic i would like to mention is soil protection against wind and water erosion this is also mandatory and for this reason ploughing is banned in some hilly areas and those with the light sandy soils especially for wide row crops another topic is that about five percent or exactly or more than five percent of the farmland has to be managed according as an ecological priority or so-called greening area and this is targeted on counter ending loss of floral and phonistic diversity this land can be covered by cover crop mixtures that's important that it has to be mixed a mixture by flower strips or by set aside land and other aspects of the other measures as well such rules are mandatory for farms to get subsidies other mandatory rules concern fertilizer application which is restricted to protect ground water and surface water against nitrate and phosphorus and for this reason there is there are crop specific rules on the amount on the timing and on the incorporation of mineral and as well organic fertilizers and manures first of all let me come to the crop rotation aspect and i have subdivided this topic into two parts the first part is the effect of the cropping interval that means the time between two times growing sugar beet the background is that this question gained importance due to the increase of the sugar beet acreage some years ago that was caused by reform of the EU market regulation unfortunately we do not have results from field trials on this effect of different cropping intervals under current conditions but we have some data from a farm survey from a national farm survey which was conducted on three to four hundred farms per year in Germany since 2010 it is organized by my colleagues Nico Stockfish and Christopher Ross and they found that for comparable soil and climatic conditions there are no yield differences between the cropping intervals of two three and four years okay i will move forward to the effect of the preceding crop we have data on this from a long-term crop rotation trial near Göttingen where field P was much better concerning the yield of the following sugar beet compared to winter wheat and silage maize although the optimum infertilizer dose was up to 60 kilogram and per hectare lower after peas than after wheat and maize this results indicates that maize herbicide residues and especially the occurrence of rhizoptonia root and crown rot were the main causes for the yield depression but not the end limitation we could use this trial for evaluating agronomic efficiencies for not the whole rotation but for two year preceding crop sugar beet successions means for two successions consisting of a preceding crop that was different and then followed followed by sugar beet the efficiency is defined in this case as the energy yield per unit of each single agronomic input factor as there are nitrogen phosphorus pesticide energy input and land these are the yes the edges of this star the succession with the greatest efficiency of the respective indicator was set to one the succession maize plus sugar beet had the highest efficiency for the factors phosphorus pesticides energy and land use and only for the nitrogen efficiency the succession of grain p and sugar beet was highest this was clearly due to the very high yield of maize and sugar beet combined in the same rotation which you can see here on on top and in this case the cover crop the intermediate crop was also included in the evaluation that means the energy input to to grow this crop moving forward to the next topic I will deal with its soil village the first study I will show is from a farm survey conducted in the UK more than 50% of the crop land included in this survey was used under no or minimum tillage practice minimum tillage includes a broad variety of tillage machinery uses which leave a variable variable amount of plant residues on the soil surface this study refers to all crops grown on the farms included another study which was conducted in Germany focuses more specifically on the tillage practices used for sugar beet cultivation at present close to 80% of the crop is grown with minimum tillage practices while about 20 years ago this was only 20% since then many activities have been conducted to gain and also to spread knowledge and experiences among farmers regarding soil conservation tillage official and private extensive services have contributed to this progress including as one example the German society of conservation tillage and also by the activities of the sugar beet grows associations and the sugar companies three out of two farmers which is to be seen here in this table in the bottom line three out of two out of three farmers grow cover crops in between the cereal pre-crop and the following sugar beet and the reminder to achieve the 80% use straw mulch straw mulch from the preceding cereal straw to cover the soil however I have to say that the soil cover either by straw or cover crop residues is usually below 20% only after the seedbed preparation done in spring to establish or to put the seeds into the soil okay that's about tillage and now moving forward to cover crops the survey data on soil tillage have shown that the cover crop is very frequent in use before sugar beet cover crops species grown in Germany are mostly not frost hard they are sown in august after cereal harvest and often produce a dry material between one and three tons per hectare they should be killed by frost but this has not been become very secure in the past years since 2013 we had no year that guaranteed frost killing of cover crops and in future it has to be expected that the winter is becoming more and more wild and frost killing is more and more incomplete and for this reason glyphosate has become more and more important which may become a big problem in the future because there is a ban on glyphosate from 23 onward but will I come back to this a little later in the cover crop in the past decade the cover crop acreage has increased from approximately 40% to more than 60% as you can take from this slide and at the same time the proportion of mustard decreased and the proportion of specious mixtures increased tremendously and this is due to the ecological priority introduction by the EU and the national rulers in the past mustard and radish were used for BCN control beets with nematode control but many field trials have shown that the efficiency of control is very variable and mostly low compared to growing beets with nematode resistant sugar beet varieties mixtures came up with the obligation I mentioned before generally it can be said that cover crops are very efficient in reducing nitrate concentration in soil in autumn and thus reducing the risk of soil of erosion the contribution of cover crops to improve the humor stock is very insecure and only if the diagram that the production is very high a reasonable effect can be expected and finally I have to say that end delivery to sugar beet is not very significant from a broad variety of trials and there is no clear proof for positive effects of cover crops on sugar beet yield but yes the greening subsidies can play an important role in the farmer's decision to grow cover crops instead of no clear or very low clear positive effects I'm now at my last slide with a few comments on future challenges for political reasons the EU has decided to ban the use of glyphosate as I mentioned already the mild winters will cause more and more survival of cover crops and thus alternative methods to kill cover crops are required and there are a lot of activities to do so if no appropriate alternative will be developed we have probably face a loss of cover crop acreage and the positive effects that are linked to cover crops sorry yes further plant protection products have to face a ban as well and this encourages the need for alternative measures methods in weed control seric already mentioned and also insecticides and fungicides okay and finally I would like to mention that climate change will also impose problems to sugar beet production as for all other crops grown in ured as well and it would be nice to have yes higher adapted or better adapted varieties to eat and drought stress I see only limited potential for improving cultivation methods to for example decrease drought stress okay that's it thank you for listening and I'm open for questions thank you thank you very much dr. coke thank you for your good presentation dr. coke I have one question I was just curious that with white mustard being a cover crop do you uh is there is that does that serve as a host for the nematode cyst nematodes are there concerns about management no the white mustard we have tolerant resistant and susceptible varieties and in combination with sugar beet cultivation only resistant varieties bcn resistant varieties are grown that's an important criteria um with regards to your oat cover crop have you encountered any issues with controlling oats in your sugar beet crop or before your sugar beet crop oats are included in mixtures and I have not seen any any any problem with killing or or other aspects of of linked to oats regarding sugar beet there might be a bridge for a fits a fits transferring viruses to winter cereals that might be a bit of a bigger problem the cover crops I'm so much earlier than winter cereals and they might produce a bridge to the winter cereals on a neighboring field all right can you please maybe stop sharing screen so tom can get ready and I have one last quick question for you you indicated you indicated that the cover crop they do not increase yield but have you seen any improvement in your crop quality higher sugar concentration higher recoverable sucrose um no not higher sucrose concentration um what we saw or what we do see sometimes is a lower amino and concentration a minor nitrogen concentration which is used as a quality criterion in Germany at least but yes this this is an indicator for yes nitrogen fixation and not a higher availability of nitrogen coming from the cover crop