Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 6 POTATO GROWER 25 The next day the tour continued with a visit to the R.D. Offutt Company Farms where they stopped out at another potato stor- age warehouse, from there they went to visit a pollinator habitat and also stopped by some tree plant- ing sites. After that Dr. Susie Thompson, NDSU Potato Breeder, spoke about the complexities of potato breeding, since potatoes have 4 sets of DNA, versus most other crops. That means about 35,000 possible individual genes versus half that for humans and other mammals as well as other crops. The afternoon tour started with a stop at a potato field where the group got to see a demonstration of ground applications and aerial applications from a helicopter (for demonstration purposes water was used). The helicopter pilot said he could spray around 160 acres in an hour. The EPA officials were very inquisitive and asked many ques- tions throughout the tour. One of the EPA officials said that you can only do so much from your cubicle in Washington, DC. He said they need to get out to the fields with the growers and ask questions to gather more information to help them with the decisions they have to make. Vince Restucci, Director of Procure- ment and Business Technology for the R.D. Offutt Company Farms says, “The tour turned out to be very successful. We highlighted many different topics for the EPA regula- tors that were in attendance. We showed them fields that were recently harvested from peas, then planted with a cover crop of mus- tard and tilled back into the soil as a bio-fumigant prior to being planted to potatoes next season. There was also a field tour of Alturas variety to show them the work we were doing on a lower nitrogen use variety and also showed them disease modeling software output and our approach to applying crop protection prod- ucts. We also had a number of uni- The group got a to see a field sprayed by a helicopter at R.D. Offutt Company Farms (for demonstration purposes water was used).