Putting Up Resistance
December 30, 2009 For Dr. Bill Robertson and a group of Mid-South cotton growers, a recent trip to the Texas High Plains brought on a feeling of unwelcome déjà vu.
As part of the National Cotton Council’s Producer Information Exchange (PIE) tour, the group traveled west to check in on some of the production practices that Texas growers were willing to share. Once the group saw some of the fields on the High Plains, though, they saw a familiar sight.
“There was pigweed everywhere,” says Robertson, Manager of Cotton Agronomy, Soils and Physiology with the NCC. “You know they’d had some wet weather and had some delays getting in there and controlling that.”
Still, Robertson says, in the fields where the Texas growers had sprayed, you could occasionally spot one or two weeds that had survived. Talking with the Mid-South growers, who knew all-too-well how vigorous Palmer amaranth can be, did little to ease the Texas growers’ worries.
“They were concerned, thinking that if they don’t have it now, it sure looks like its working towards that,” says Robertson.
The fact that glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth has become a national issue in such a rapid amount of time has led members of the NCC to focus more intensely on the issue at the upcoming Beltwide Cotton Conferences, which are to be held in New Orleans, January 4-8. Event organizers are planning a roundtable discussion on the topic on the afternoon of January 5, and Robertson says there are plans in place to devote one of the sessions during the week to weed resistance.
“The last few years, we’ve had the researchers and Extension guys talking weed resistance at the Beltwide,” Robertson says. “It’s one of the things where a lot of people wanted to have a panel of producers talking about how they’re managing resistance. Those are some of the things we’re looking at to increase awareness.”
Since its discovery in Macon County, Georgia, in 2005, glyphosate resistance has popped up across the Southeast and Mid-South. Many Extension specialists and weed scientists in the Mid-South agree that 2008 was a banner year for the resistance epidemic. In that year, resistant pigweed became the number one weed pest in the state of Arkansas. Growers in Tennessee and Mississippi also documented resistance for the first time.
While this year’s Beltwide seminars will attempt to help those who are already managing resistance issues, Robertson says resistance prevention in Texas and further west will be a primary goal of the Conferences.
“We’ve got so much cotton in Texas, and right now the resistance issue isn’t a big deal. I think it’s really important for them to be proactive where they can. Because if you look at the guys in the Mid-South, if they could go back and be more proactive, then that is definitely something that they’d do,” Robertson says.
The opportunity to interact with some of the nation’s premier cotton experts should be a big draw to the resistance management sessions of this year’s Conferences, according to Robertson.
“The Beltwide offers an opportunity for producers, consultants and experts to all get together. And a lot of times you have one-on-one conversations with folks and it helps get answers to help better address your particular situation. Opportunities like that just aren’t available online or elsewhere,” he says.
“We’ll have producers and experts from all over the country right there in one spot.”
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