Life Sciences Commons^™

A Search For The Sweet Spot In Sugar Beet Production, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

The whole point of growing sugar beets is to produce sugar. But once the beets are harvested and stored for processing—usually in huge piles that can weigh thousands of tons—they slowly start to decay, which lowers their sucrose levels.

Roots store sugar even more poorly if they originate from fields infested with the virus that causes rhizomania, a disease that also severely affects yield. Resistance genes in sugar beet help protect the plant from rhizomania, but some strains of the virus have evolved to overcome one of the resistance genes, Rz1.

“The economic loss from damage to stored beets …

Ars Scientists Rally 'Round The Range, Dennis O’Brien, Ann Perry, Tony Svejcar, Jeremy James, Mary Lucero

Agricultural Research Magazine

Rangelands in the western United States provide essential grazingland for hundreds of thousands of cattle and other livestock as well as a home for a vast array of native plants and animals. And since these rangelands make up a large part of the U.S. public land system, taxpayers often foot the bill for upkeep of the hardscrabble holdings. So Agricultural Research Service scientists across the West are collaborating to make sure the money used to sustain and repair these arid ecosystems is spent on programs that work.

A Burning Issue

For millennia, periodic wildfires have been an integral part of …

A Rough, Tough Forage For Rangeland Cattle, Ann Perry

Agricultural Research Magazine

Forage kochia (Kochia prostrata) is a shrubby Asian native that has found a new home on western U.S. rangelands. And although it is not invasive, it is still sometimes more resilient than the North American native plants.

“In some rangeland soils, it’s difficult to successfully reseed with native plants,” says geneticist Blair Waldron, who works at the Agricultural Research Service’s Forage and Range Research Laboratory in Logan, Utah. “But we’ve shown that forage kochia can be established to enhance rangelands and compete with cheatgrass successfully. It can even protect against wildfires. Some people said that livestock won’t eat …