Excerpts from the February 1980 Issue of The Sugarbeet Grower

Storage Rot Costs Beet Industry Millions During Each Campaign — “A sugar factory could have recovered 2.8 million more pounds of sucrose from 280,000 tons of sugarbeets had they been protected against storage rots with the fungicide thiabendazole or been genetically resistant to the rots.
    “Those estimates by [USDA] plant pathologist William M. Bugbee, Fargo, N.D., are based on results comparing genetically resistant breeding lines and susceptible commercial hybrids, with and without fungicide dipping, under field conditions. “The estimates are possible because untreated, susceptible hybrids in one test developed about the same amount of rot as was found in rot-susceptible roots held more than 100 days at a sugar processing factory. Thiabendazole treatment reduced storage rot to a trace amount in susceptible hybrids after 100 days of storage. Rot in the genetically resistant lines was nearly as low.

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