Check out this "Cooking with Science" video featuring our very own Dr. Karen Cichy!
Cooking with Science - Buckwheat and Beans - Soup Episode
The new fruit harvesting robot (patents pending) developed by Dr. Renfu Lu’s team enables fast and efficient picking of apples, which aims to address the growing shortage and rising cost of labor for the U.S. apple and other specialty crop industries.
Centennial Celebration
Celebrating 100 years of collaboration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University.
Read about our celebration story here!
Listen to our Sugarbeet Program Story here at Brownfield Ag News!
The ASABE award-winning, patented in-field sorting system developed by Dr. Renfu Lu’s team can grade and sort apples based on color and size for up to 12 fruits per second in orchard. The technology enables growers to remove or segregate inferior fruit at harvest, so as to achieve cost savings in postharvest handling and reduce postharvest loss.
Yellow Bean Breeding Line at Flowering Growing at Organic Farm
Photo Caption: 1920's Historical photo of truck hauling sugarbeets.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
MSU News Link
Brownfield News Link
Yellow Kidney Bean Seed
Photo Credit: Jon Shaff
Photo Caption: 1920's Historical photo of mother beets.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
A new robotic harvesting prototype for picking apples in orchard. The robot’s picking arm is composed of a small-size vacuum tube with a specially designed soft end effector, which first sucks and holds a target fruit and then rotates to detach the fruit from the tree.
Photo Caption: Greenhouse photo from the 1980's.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
Photo Caption: The use water to cut the top of beets in the 1970's.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
This plate is an isolate of Cercospora beticola growing on a pH indicator medium, showing one of the types of impacts a fungus can have on its environment.
Photo Caption: Pollen collection in the 1970's.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
 versus susceptible (left) beets.jpg)
Response of sugar beet varieties to Cercospora leaf spot. On the left is a susceptible variety and on the right is a resistant line developed by the USDA-ARS breeding program.
Photo Caption: A tissue culture in the 1970's.
Read more about our centennial celebration in sugarbeet research between the USDA ARS and Michigan State University:
Mission
The mission of the Sugarbeet and Bean Research Unit is to: 1) develop disease and crop management practices and analyze new germplasm of sugar beet and other beet types with desired agronomic traits using genetic/genomic, physiological, pathological, precision agriculture and automation techniques; 2) develop dry bean germplasm with improved nutritional and end-use quality and identify beans and other pulse crop germplasm with desirable ingredient quality, via phenotypic evaluations, plant breeding, and molecular analysis methods; and 3) develop innovative sensing and automation technologies for harvest and postharvest quality evaluation of fruits and vegetables to help growers and processors achieve labor and cost savings, enhance product marketability and reduce postharvest loss.