Boll-Rot Watch is on in the Mid-South

Bloomberg

Cotton crops in the Mississippi River Delta, a main U.S. growing region, will get more rain at the end of this week, heightening concerns that boll rot will erode production, analysts said.

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A cold front late tomorrow into the next day will produce rainfall of 0.5 inch (1.3 centimeters) to 1.5 inches, said Drew Lerner, the president of World Weather Inc. in Overland Park, Kansas. The precipitation will be in southern Arkansas, western and central Mississippi and Louisiana, Lerner said. The U.S. is the world’s biggest cotton exporter.

“The rain, from a cotton perspective, it’s not a good thing,” Lerner said. “The boll-rot problem will continue.”

Cotton futures for December 2009 delivery fell 0.15 cent, or 0.2 percent, to 61.3 cents a pound at 9:55 a.m. on ICE Futures U.S. in New York. December of 2010 closed up 144 points to 69.09

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Before today, cotton futures rose 25 percent this year in New York on speculation that global demand will outpace production. The U.S. harvest will increase 4.8 percent in the year that began Aug. 1 from a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast.

Bolls, the pods in which cotton grows, were opening on 57 percent of the crop as of Sept. 27, up from 46 percent a week earlier, according to the USDA.

The wet weather is “not good for drying out the bolls as we head toward harvest,” said Dale Mohler, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com.

About 8 percent of the crop was collected as of Sept. 27, compared with 11 percent a year earlier, the USDA said. The harvest was delayed by rain. In some southern states last week, precipitation was twice the normal amount, according to data from the High Plains Regional Climate Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

About 49 percent of the U.S. crop was in good or excellent condition on Sept. 27, compared with 50 percent a week earlier, the USDA said.

Fields in the Delta have firmed up because of dry weather this week, Lerner said.

 

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