Welcome to episode 3 of Big Agriculture, my ongoing series about some of the world's
biggest crops.
Today, I'll be talking about one of my favorite veggies: beets.
I'm going to be mostly talking about the sugar beet, a variety I didn't realize until
researching this video is extremely important.
The sugar beet is a subspecies of Beta vulgaris, and the sugar beet variety is known as the
Altissima group.
They are a fairly small plant, growing low to the ground with a considerable root system.
They're naturally biennial, meaning they grow for two years.
In the first year, they store large amounts of sugar in their roots over the winter.
It is this that makes them so agriculturally important.
Sugar beets are the world's second most important source of sugar, beat out by sugar
cane.
Sugar beets contain a large amount of sucrose, anywhere from 13 to 22% of their weight.
Unharvested, the beets would use that excess sugar to support their growth in their second
year.
To be harvested, the beets must first be mowed, to remove their voluminous leaves.
With that done, they can be pulled from the ground, and stored until they are processed.
To remove the sugar, the beets must first be washed, and then they are sliced.
At this stage they look a little bit like french fries, and these sliced pieces are
referred to as cossettes.
These cossettes then enter the diffuser, where they are mixed with hot water.
This dissolves the beets' high sugar content into the water.
The mixture is also pulped, to squeeze out every bit of sugar.
The remaining, sugarless pulp is dried, and can be sold for things like livestock feed.
The sugary water is separated out, cleaned, and boiled some more, to help evaporate out
some of the water.
This results in a thick, sugary syrup.
Finally, that syrup goes into a crystallizer, where it is boiled, stirred, cooled and then
spun, to separate sugar crystals and syrup.
The thick syrup is actually molasses, and the sugar crystals are just pure, tasty sugar
that can be packaged.
In the United States, the sugarbeet industry took off around 1870.
The industry then grew rapidly; sugar beets were grown in 18 states by 1917.
According to the USDA, 1.1 million acres of sugar beets were harvested in 2016.
They're grown in 11 states, including Minnesota, the Dakotas, and Montana.
In the 2009-2010 growing year, 95% of the sugar beets grown in the US were grown from
genetically modified seeds.
This variety is resistant to glycophosphate, the molecule in Round Up that makes it an
effective herbicide.
By using this gmo, farmers are able to spray their fields with Round Up to kill weeds,
but the genetically modified beets are unaffected.
There are a number of diseases or pests that can affect sugarbeets.
As I mentioned, weeds can be an issue, but so can fungi like Cercospora.
This disease affects a number of crops, including avocado, coffee and, of course, beets, and
it causes brown lesions that progress into ragged holes in the leaves.
It can stop beets from growing to full size, and can be treated with fungicides.
It can live for years in soil, so is a difficult disease to get rid of.
There you have it, a brief introduction to an underrated but important crop.
If you have any questions, I encourage you to leave them in comments, or check out my
sources in the description for more detailed information.
Don't forget to hit the like and subscribe buttons, and I'll see you soon.
All right, and one more thing, I'm going to be doing a giveaway of some of these really
nifty posters I got from my friends at JSTOR Global Plants.
The Global Plants database is a really amazing collection of type specimens from herbaria
around the world.
I'll include a link in the description, so you should definitely go check it out.
But to enter, you need to be subscribed to my channel, like this video, and then comment
letting me know a plant you'd like to see me talk about in a future video.
I'll also be giving away a poster each on my instagram account and my twitter, so go
to the links to those accounts in the description and try to get another chance to win.
I will see you soon.
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