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2010 Bean and Beet Field Day

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

-E. Taylor

Yesterday was the annual field day held at the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center in Richville, MI. This was the second year that the field day has been held at the farm’s new location. This year’s tour offered more one-on-one interaction between the attendees and the researchers which received positive feedback. There were researchers there from the many different disciplines that work at the “Bean and Beet Farm”, including pathologists, breeders, entomologists, extension specialists, and of course weed scientists. Christy Sprague and Alicia Spangler were at the sugarbeet stop to talk about the many different weed management trials and Alicia’s M.S. project looking at varying nitrogen fertilizer rates in combination with weed removal timings. Gary Powell and Ryan Holmes were at the dry bean stop to answer weed control and dessication questions as well as to talk about Ryan’s M.S. project looking at row spacing and populations as it relates to canopy closure, weed management, and some insects in black and small red beans. The field day turned out to be a great success and we look forward to doing in again next year.

Posted in Dry bean, Extension, Field Days, Sugar beet | No Comments »

Raise your hand if you’re tired of RAIN

Friday, June 11th, 2010

-E. Taylor Cute Cloud Rain Cartoon Images

It seems lately that it rains every few days in Michigan. Even small periods of heavy rain cause the fields to be wet for several days afterward. All of this unwanted precipitation has caused several issues for our research such as:

  • Poor emergence of sugarbeets (one field required replanting)
  • Delayed planting of soybeans a couple weeks ago
  • Delayed planting of dry beans the past two weeks at the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center and on campus
  • Delayed initiation of our winter annual germination and decay study

So what do we do when we are “rained out”? Many times we will make sure all of the needed stakes are prepared, any chemical needed is weighed out and gathered, and the facilities and equipment are maintained at the Agronomy Farm. We also spend some time up in the laboratory processing weed seed and biomass samples, entering data, sewing storage bags for various experiments, and cleaning weed seed for greenhouse experiments.

Perhaps when the weather begins to cooperate there will be more interesting things to blog about :)

Just as a reminder our MSU Weed Tour is coming up on June 30th at the Plant Pathology Field Lab. Information on the tour is available on our website.

Posted in Dry bean, Soybean, Sugar beet, Winter Annuals | No Comments »

Undergraduate Research on Mesotrione and Tembotrione Carryover in Sugar Beet

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

-E. Taylor

Nathan alongside his poster from the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum

Nathan alongside his poster from the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum

Over the course of this school year Dr. Renner and I have been working our professorial assistant from the Honors College, MSU freshmen Nathan Zeitler. Being interested in chemistry, Nathan wanted to explore the relationship between the triketones, sugar beet injury, and soil binding. The objectives of his experiments were to 1) examine the sensitivity of sugar beet to mesotrione and tembotrione, 2) identify the herbicide concentration causing 50% loss of sugar beet biomass, and 3) determine sugar beet sensitivity to these herbicides in the absence of soil. A soil bioassay was used to address the first two objectives and a hydroponic study was conducted for the final objective. Nathan presented the results of his experiments at the University Undergraduate Research and Arts Forum last Friday along with over 500 of his peers from 14 different colleges (see poster pdf by clicking on image). Nathan plans to work with us again next year to further explore some of the hurdles we came across through out the year with regards to the herbicides binding to container materials and the hydroponics nutrient solution.

Posted in Herbicides, Sugar beet, Teaching/Education | No Comments »

Sugar beet beet Sugar beet beeeet time is here

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

-E. Taylor

With the recent warm weather sugar beet planting is feverishly underway in the thumb of Michigan. One large-scale grower we know in the Reese area finished planting on Monday! We planted our beet research plots at the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center in Richville, MI yesterday. We will plant two studies on the campus agronomy farm by the end of the week. It felt good to get out of the lab to enjoy some sunshine.

In the spirit of planting we want to share with you our very favorite sugar beet song…just try not to get it stuck in your head, it’s impossible :)

Posted in Sugar beet | No Comments »

2009 SVREC Field Day

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

-E. Taylor

What’s SVREC? It’s the Saginaw Valley Research and Extension Center…but we still call it “Bean and Beet”. Tuesday, August 25th was the first field day at this new Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) in Richville, MI. With around 1/3 of the farm’s acreage in research plots there was a lot to learn from the researchers. I drove one of the eight wagons around to each station. Our first stop was with Christina DiFonzo, MSU entomologist. She introduced us to Western Bean Cutworm, showing us it’s lifecycle, distribution in MI, and signs of damage. Apparently the worms are what do the most damage to crops such as corn, dry edible beans, and snap beans. Our next stop was with Greg Varner, research director for the Production Research Advisory Board for the Michigan Bean Industry. Among other things, Greg discussed some of the disease issues dry bean producers have been seeing around the state. Our third stop was with  Jim Kelly, MSU Dry Bean Breeder. Here we learned about the timeline for introducing new varieties. From crossing the two ”parent” bean varieties to creating a new commercially available variety can take 8 to 10 years!  New varieties are selected for disease resistance, favorable structural characteristics, yield, quality, etc. On our fourth stop we met with Michigan Sugar Company research agronomist, Jim Stewart, who discussed trends in sugarbeet yields and disease incidence across MI, and USDA Sugarbeet Geneticist, Mitch McGrath who gave us an introduction to sugarbeet genetics and how favorable traits determined. Our fifth stop was with Corey Guza, Michigan Sugar Company Agronomist, and  Linda Hanson, USDA Sugarbeet Pathologist. Corey and Linda talked about a variety of diseases that occur in sugarbeet, including cercospora leaf spot, phoma leaf spot, and rhizoctonia root rot.  Our final stop on the tour was with Christy Sprague, our own MSU weed scientist. Among the things she discussed were dessication trials that her team is conducting in dry beans using Valor, Gramoxone, and Roundup and the control of volunteer glyphosate-resistant corn and soybeans in glyphosate-resistant sugarbeet.  After the tour we headed up to the brand new equipment shed to have a delicious pork chop lunch and listen to a brief presentation regarding the progress at the new farm.

Posted in Dry bean, Field Days, Sugar beet | Comments Off

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