In 2020, Russia, the United States, Germany, France and Turkey were the world's five largest sugar beet producers.

The pulp, insoluble in water and mainly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin, and pectin, is used in animal feed.

Sugar beet foliage has a rich, brilliant green color and grows to a height of about 35 cm (14 in).

The leaves are numerous and broad and grow in a tuft from the crown of the beet, which is usually level with or just above the ground surface.

The 16th-century French scientist Olivier de Serres discovered a process for preparing sugar syrup from (red) beetroot.

He wrote: "The beet-root, when being boiled, yields a juice similar to syrup of sugar, which is beautiful to look at on account of its vermilion colour"[11] (1575).

[13][14] In 1747, Andreas Sigismund Marggraf, professor of physics in the Academy of Science of Berlin, isolated sugar from beetroots and found them at concentrations of 1.3–1.6%.

Marggraf's student and successor Franz Karl Achard began plant breeding sugar beet in Kaulsdorf near Berlin in 1786.

[7] Franz Karl Achard opened the world's first beet sugar factory in 1801, at Kunern, Silesia (now Konary, Poland).

A subsoil of gravel, or the presence of hardpan, is not desirable, as cultivation to a depth of from 12 to 15 inches (30 to 38 cm) is necessary to produce the best results.

Climatic conditions, temperature, sunshine, rainfall and winds have an important bearing upon the success of sugar beet agriculture.

High winds are harmful, as they generally crust the land and prevent the young beets from coming through the ground.

The best results are obtained along the coast of southern California, where warm, sunny days succeeded by cool, foggy nights seem to meet sugar beet's favored growth conditions.

Sunshine of long duration but not of great intensity is the most important factor in the successful cultivation of sugar beets.

Near the equator, the shorter days and the greater heat of the sun sharply reduce the sugar content in the beet.

In Michigan, the long summer days from the relatively high latitude (the Lower Peninsula, where production is concentrated, lies between the 41st and 46th parallels North) and the influence of the Great Lakes result in satisfactory climatic conditions for sugar beet culture.

It allows the roots to penetrate the subsoil without much obstruction, thereby preventing the beet from growing out of the ground, besides enabling it to extract considerable nourishment and moisture from the lower soil.

At the northern end of its range, growing seasons as short as 100 days can produce commercially viable sugar beet crops.

In warmer climates, such as in California's Imperial Valley, sugar beets are a winter crop, planted in the autumn and harvested in the spring.

Until the latter half of the 20th century, sugar beet production was highly labor-intensive, as weed control was managed by densely planting the crop, which then had to be manually thinned two or three times with a hoe during the growing season.

One laborer grabbed the beets by their leaves, knocked them together to shake free loose soil, and then laid them in a row, root to one side, greens to the other.

[21] The most productive sugar beet farms in the world, in 2022, were in Chile, with a nationwide average yield of 106.2 tonnes per hectare.

In a number of countries, notably the Czech Republic and Slovakia, this analogy led to making a rum-like distilled spirit called Tuzemak.

In Germany, particularly the Rhineland area, and in the Netherlands, this sugar beet syrup (called Zuckerrüben-Sirup or Zapp in German, or Suikerstroop in Dutch) is used as a spread for sandwiches, as well as for sweetening sauces, cakes and desserts.

BP and Associated British Foods plan to use agricultural surpluses of sugar beet to produce biobutanol in East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

[34] According to Atlantic Biomass president Robert Kozak, a study at University of Maryland Eastern Shore indicates sugar beets appear capable of producing 860 to 900 gallons (3,256 to 3,407 liters) of ethanol per acre.

After planting sugar beet seed, weeds emerge in fields and growers apply glyphosate to control them.

Glyphosate is commonly used in field crops because it controls a broad spectrum of weed species[42] and has a low toxicity.

[47][48] Believing a sugar shortage would occur USDA-APHIS developed three options in the environmental assessment to address the concerns of environmentalists.

[51] All sugar beet centromeres are made up of a single satellite DNA family[52] and centromere-specific LTR retrotransposons.