b'Six Feet of Sand, No Playbook After Hurricane Helene rewrote the landscape, a Tennessee research team is building a first-of-its-kind recovery guide to help plants grow againone failed field at a time.By Aimee Nielson, Seed World U.S. EditorWHEN HURRICANE HELENEripped through Upper East Tennessee, it didnt just knock down trees and flatten fencesit changed the land. Entire pastures were buried. Fields became ghost versions of themselves, their topsoil hidden beneath six feet of sand and silt. The river had rewritten the rules and growers were left holding a blank page.No one had a playbook, University of Tennessee (UT) Extension environmental soil specialist Forbes Walker says. Theres no guidance in the literature. We knew how to clean up the debris. We didnt know what was in the sediments or how to grow anything on top of them.But thats changing. Thanks to a cross-disciplinary team of researchers, farmers, engineers, extension specialists, and stu-dents a playbook is emergingone trial, one greenhouse test and one failed planting at a time.If I Can Tell Them What Not to Do, Im HappyThis flood recovery initiative is supported in part by a USDA grant aimed at building a regional disaster recovery framework for agriculture. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture and The UT Institute of Agriculture are also funding the efforts. One of the teams primary goals is to produce a resource that other states can use when floodwaters bring more than just destruc-tion; they bring uncertainty, sediment and questions with no easy answers.Some farms had six feet of sand. Others had four feet of silt, Walker says. You cant plant into that. Your seed bank is gone. The topsoil is six feet down. It was just gone.At first, farmers werent thinking about recovery. They werent asking agronomy questions, UT Beef & Forage Center director Bruno Pedreira says. They were asking would they have pay taxes on land that doesnt exist anymore?Fields were split in two. The river had changed course. A farmer told us, This was a 50-acre field. Now its 25. The other half belongs to my neighbor across the river, Pedreira recalls. And nobody knew what to do.22/ SEEDWORLD.COMDECEMBER 2025'