April 30, 2018

The Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau (FMCVB) recognized the organizers of the 101^st Potato Association of America (PAA) meeting with the Industry Excellence Award. The award ceremony took place during the FMCVB Annual Meeting and Awards Luncheon on March 13, 2018. 

According to FMCVB, the award is given to “the individual or organization that has made a significant effort to bring a major convention, conference, meeting or special event to Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo during the last year.”

The PAA Local Arrangements Committee was chaired by Andrew Robinson, Gary Secor and Asunta Thompson, and included 13 more people from NDSU, the University of Minnesota, the USDA/ARS Red River Valley Research Center, potato industries, and the Northern Plains Potato Growers Association. More than 250 researchers attended the meeting July 23-27, 2017. For more information on the 2017 PAA meeting, go to https://bit.ly/2xgs4VH.

Robinson is the NDSU Potato Production Extension Agronomist; Secor leads the Potato and Sugarbeet Disease project in the NDSU Department of Plant Pathology; and Thompson leads the Potato Breeding project in the Department of Plant Sciences.

The FMCVB was founded in 1981 and specializes in event and convention planning as well as group tours and sports events planning for the Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo region. For more information on the FMCVB, go to https://www.fargomoorhead.org/.

Pictures of the event are featured on the FMCVB Facebook page at https://bit.ly/2Kin8Go.

Author: Karen Hertsgaard, 701-231-5384, karen.hertsgaard@ndsu.edu
Editor: Kamie Beeson, 701-231-7123, kamie.a.beeson@ndsu.edu