I'm Michael Vunch, I'm the plant pathologist at the Carrington Research Extension Center. One of the crops that we work with very extensively is sunflower. And the disease that we've been working on in sunflower is sclerotinia head rot.  And we've been running a very extensive and expansive program targeting improved management of sclerotinia head rot here for the entire decade that I've worked here. And one of the critical questions that we sought to address early in that research is when are some fliers susceptible to sclerotinia head rot? There has always been a lot of talk that the head rot must come in at R7 when there are depressions in the back of the head and water builds up in the back of the head. And the heads are starting to synast, i.e. you've got some dead tissue in that yellowing back of the head. And so we sought to address the question of when the head rot develops. We did this by inoculating some flowers at different growth stages. We inoculated during full bloom during R6 growth stage when all the ray flowers and the disc flowers are fully wilted but they're still attached to the head, R7 and R8. And we did this with confection hybrids, with oil seed hybrids, with susceptible oil seed hybrids and partially resistant hybrids, highly susceptible to confection hybrids and partially resistant confection hybrids. And we also did it by bagging the heads or leaving the heads unbagged. With the idea that if we bag the heads we trap humidity around the head and create conditions even more favorable for head rot. We inoculated the heads, we put out sprinklers over the top of the sunflowers to facilitate keeping the heads wet throughout those growth stages. These sprinklers were on a timer so the heads just stayed moist to the touch on the front but there wasn't so much water that the sunflowers would lodge. And what we found in testing conducted across three locations in North Dakota across, gosh we started in 2011 and we finished this testing in 2018. So eight years of testing, what we found very consistently is that sunflowers are very susceptible to head rot during bloom, R5 growth stage. By the time they reach the R6 growth stage, when the ray flowers and disc flowers are wilted, the susceptibility drops very sharply and they can only develop head rot if it's extremely cool and wet. And after that they are not susceptible to head rot anymore. And during the bloom period there are differences in susceptibility depending on the stage of bloom. So when the sunflowers are entering bloom, what we would call an R5.2, R5.3, i.e. about 20 to 30 percent of the disc flowers, those little flowers in the middle of the head, in bloom or completed bloom, this is early bloom. Sunflowers are not very susceptible to head rot at this stage. They are susceptible but not highly susceptible. As bloom progresses, here we have a head that's probably about R5.5, about 50 percent of the disc flowers in bloom or completed bloom. These are much more susceptible than that last head, okay? And then as bloom progresses even more, here you have a head that's probably R5.8, maybe even R5.9, 80 to 90 percent of the disc flowers in bloom or completed bloom.  And this head right here, which has 100 percent of the disc flowers either in bloom or completed bloom, is even more susceptible yet. So as the percentage of these disc flowers in bloom or completed bloom increases, the susceptibility to head rot increases, okay? And then once you hit R6, oh, the ray flowers have dropped off of this because of abrasion, just hitting other heads. But when I picked this, all the ray flowers were on here, but they're all wilted. And notice that all the disc flowers are completed in bloom.  And the hypothesis that we've come up with as well as other people in the industry is that it's probably because the kernels are starting to melanize, which gives them a bit more of a protection against infection, okay? And but they can still develop head rot at this stage, but only when it's extremely cool and wet in our experience from, again, multiple years of testing under very rigorous, rigorous testing and different regimes. The reason why we don't see the head rot usually develop until R7, R8 is not because infections occur later. It's because there's a long incubation period. And this is true for white mold in general. It's true on soybeans, it's true on dry beans. On sunflowers, it's particularly true.  And then it must colonize, must run into that head and colonize that head tissue and then work its way all the way through that thick head until it comes out to the other side. And where you see head rot, and there's quite a delay there. And you will not see the disease until R7, R8 under most circumstances. And that's just because the time it takes for the pathogen to work its way through the head. And we know that for certain because of these inoculation studies we have done where we have inoculated different growth stages and left non-inoculated checks. And so we know when we inoculate it and we can see we got the disease involved and it didn't occur until that R7, R8 growth stage in most circumstances. And so this is very useful information because once you know when the sunflowers are susceptible, you know when you have weather conditions that are likely to cause risk. And you also know that if you're thinking about using a fungicide, which we'll discuss in the next video segment, when that might be applied. And if you're interested in assessing the susceptibility of sunflower hybrids to this disease, how you must go about screening those in a non-bias manner. If you have any questions, go to the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center website. Click on Plant Pathology and scroll down to the section on sunflower sclerotinia head rot. And you'll see data slides that summarize the information I just presented. Thank you.


IIED is researching solutions for getting climate finance to the local level. We are developing good practice case studies with a focus on funds that promote access and rights to land, natural resources and basic services, that support local climate action and that demonstrate innovative ways of building trust between funders and local intermediaries and communities. This case study looks at how the Gangano Urban Poor Fund supports community led slum upgrading processes in Zimbabwe through a network of community based savings groups and how it engages with central and local government to upgrade informal settlements. The Gangano Fund was set up by the Zimbabwe Homeless Peoples Federation, an organization which brings together more than 500 community savings schemes in low income urban areas. The savings schemes are organized around women led daily and or weekly meetings. These regular savings meetings are the only means by which many members can access loans and save for the future. They build trust and bind communities together and provide a space for communities to articulate and prioritize their housing and basic service needs. The Zimbabwe Homeless Peoples Federation collects the savings and makes contributions into the Gangano Fund. The fund aggregates community savings and blends these with international donors such as SELA VIP, a Latin American, African and Asian social housing service and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It also augments its capital base by leveraging financial, material, human and technical resources from government and the private sector. The Zimbabwe Homeless Peoples Federation manages the Gangano Fund with the backing of Dialogue on Shelter for the Homeless in Zimbabwe Trust, DOS, an NGO that provides technical and financial managing support for upgrading housing. The fund works to secure land tenure, build low income housing and make incremental improvements to services such as drainage and sanitation. It provides loans for individual housing improvements to groups of individuals organized into solidarity loan groups, which guarantee the loan, mitigating risk. Loan beneficiaries are expected to repay within a specified period and at an agreed and affordable interest rate. The loans, which are separate from savings, are paid back to Gangano so that the money can benefit other members. Valued at around one million American dollars, the fund provides a platform for communities to engage with local government and donors and the Zimbabwe Homeless Peoples Federation have moved from providing loans to poor households to engaging directly with local and national government. For example, Zimbabwe's national housing policy recognizes incremental approaches to slum upgrading as a pro-poor service delivery strategy because of ZHPF's work. ZHPF, DOS and the city government have established city funds as financial vehicles for driving city-wide upgrading projects. ZHPF and DOS support poor communities to demonstrate that they have the capacity to sustainably participate in planning and implementing projects. The city funds work keeps resident communities actively involved in projects. They feature inclusive planning and governance arrangements whereby local communities and city government make decisions and work together towards incrementally improving and upgrading informal and poor urban settlements. Although climate adaptation was not one of the fund's original aims, funded projects have contributed to the climate resilience of people living in Zimbabwe's informal settlements. Upgrading work has delivered implicit adaptation, for example by installing dry toilets in areas prone to flooding, fitting solar energy systems and carrying out household repairs after extreme weather events.


That was honestly just the best move I've ever seen. We were told before the game that he had a good move, and yeah, that was the fastest move. I was ready to go back. It was just slow, too slow. So yeah, next time I get on base when he's pitching, I'll be ready for it. And I'll just be ready for a move like that. That was the fastest move I've seen. You guys have typically been pretty good on the bases this year. Just how frustrating is it to have a couple of blunders this evening overall? Yeah, it's tough. But we're trying to be aggressive all year. I think that's something that they wanted me to bring when I got traded here. So I'm always going to be as aggressive as I can. And I just got to clean some things up. And it's got to do a better job of knowing how quick quick is. Because that was definitely the fastest move I ever seen. So that can happen again. And the next time I face them or I get on base when he's pitching, it won't happen. Two hits earlier in the game where you would also be surprised to be pinched before. I think in that situation where you need two runs, Joey's one of the best par hitters. He's been one of the best par hitters in the game the last couple of years. So I got zero. So it's another thing I can say. I'm giving him an opportunity to tie the game right there. And if I get a single or something, it's still we're still down two runs. So it's nice to where you've got somebody on the bench like that who has a par hitter. So yeah, it's fine. It's a, I was OK with it. Did this game come down to opportunities that they seized and you did not as a team? Yeah, I think they just played better than us tonight. And we'll come back tomorrow and hopefully clean some things up and come out with the win. And tomorrow you'd help against Max Scherzer. What are you looking for there?  He's a great pitcher.  I've never faced him before. So it's going to be, you know, it's going to be pretty cool to see him out and out out there.