BERTIE 2003
07 October 2003
Witnessed by a photographer from the East Anglian Daily Times, BERTIE was harvested today.
Our superstar beet has provided us with plenty of interesting discussion topics. From the
close up photos you can see that BERTIE is not the same shape as most sugar beet and not the same shape as previous BERTIEs.
The fangy root growth is probably the result of growing near the edge of the field, on the headland.
The soil in this area of the field is sometimes more compacted due to farm machinery turning on it.
Another possible cause is the extremely dry weather we have had this year that may have made the soil very hard for the roots to grow through.
Aside from the unusual root shape, BERTIE 2003 is much smaller than previous years. This is because of the drought
conditions he had been subjected to this year. To illustrate this point, we also dug up a beet that had been growing
in an area adjacent to BERTIE, but has received irrigation (225mm over the summer). This beet has a clean weight of 1.14 kg,
compared to BERTIE's weight of 0.6 kg - a near 100% difference.
On the hottest day of the summer, we took a photo of this section of the field. The plants that received the irrigation
during the summer can clearly been seen, they have plants with green, upright leaves. The surrounding plants that hadn't
received enough water displayed drought symptoms: the pale leaves are laying flat on the ground.
When we inspected BERTIE just before we dug him up, we found some springtails living in the crack in BERTIE's crown. These springtails live on the soil surface and hopped into BERTIE's cracked crown. Springtails that live in the soil can sometime damage beet seedlings, but they are not a problem for larger beet.
Once BERTIE had been lifted, photographed and had his top removed (with a beet knife), we took him into the labs for analysis.
Alan Thornhill, our plant clinic expert, inspected for evidence of pest and disease damage. There was no evidence of fungal infection in the crack in the crown. There was a small lesion on the edge of the crown, which Alan Dewar our Entomology expert, identified as damage caused by a cutworm.
Once the inspection was completed, we moved on to preparing BERTIE for the laboratory analysis.
BERTIE is liquidised to make a fine paste (brei)
The brei is then analysis in the laboratory here at Broom's Barn
Analysis results
| BERTIE | Sample Irrigated Beet |
| Dirty Weight | 623g | 1156g |
| Clean Weight | 599g | 1144g |
| % Soil Tare | 3.8% | 1% |
| Sugar Content (%) | 16.39 | 16.91 |
| Sugar Content (Sachets) | 25 | 48 |
