Up at the University of Minnesota’s Northwest Research and Outreach Center (NWROC), Ashok Chanda and Austin Lien are doing sugar beet health research to boost the Upper Midwest’s sugar-beet grower community. Chanda, an extension faculty member with the Department of Plant Pathology, and Lien, a recent PhD grad who comes from a family of beet farmers, have dedicated their careers to research plant diseases that impact sugar beet farms in Minnesota and North Dakota, which produce more than half of the nation's sugar beet crop.
As Extension faculty, an essential part of Chanda’s role is providing actionable, research-backed disease management recommendations to the stakeholders. This involves evaluating conventional and alternative crop protection products for effectively managing diseases. Chanda is also collaborating with the regional sugar beet breeder, Chenggen Chu based at the USDA-ARS in Fargo to develop Rhizoctonia resistant sugar beet germplasm.
Check out some of Lien and Chanda’s recent evaluations in Plant Health Progress: