Happy Birthday Pix

by Henry Gantz
Senior Editor, Cotton Grower Magazine
hgantz@meistermedia.com

I am working on a PGR story for the June issue of Cotton Grower and I was digging around to trying to find the year that BASF’s Pix – the first plant growth regulator that I can remember – hit the market. It was 1972, and that’s hard to believe. This will make the 36th season mepiquat chloride, the active ingredient in Pix, has been used in cotton.

In surfing around, I came across a very interesting website that has a chronological history of crop-protection product introductions. See: http://www.agranova.co.uk/herbhist.htm

Would you believe sodium chlorate hit the market in 1910? 2,4-D in 1942? Karmex in 1951? MSMA in 1956? Some things don’t get better with age, but mepiquat chloride did.

The years will blur my memory, but I recall that in 1972 Pix was a one-shot product and results were all over the place. You had to wonder if it was a good-dream product or a nightmare. But during the aging process, we learned that low rate, sequential applications of mepiquat chloride were the silver bullet. I say without reservation in the story that Pix was as impactful as Bollgard and boll weevil eradication.

I can remember playing hide-and-seek in cotton that was over six-feet tall. You could get lost. Tall cotton was good cotton, and “tall cotton” became a Southern colloquialism for good fortune. Man, if I could just hit lottery, I’d be in tall cotton.

I’d like to hit the lottery, but I’ll skip the tall cotton.

So with that in mind, happy 36th birthday Pix, may your day be spent in short cotton.