Mississippi Cotton Experts Hold Court
August 1, 2011 Much like the rest of the Cotton Belt, the Mid-South has been no stranger to setbacks during the 2011 growing season. Cotton producers in the Delta states faced flooding, hail and sand blasting early in the year before drought conditions settled in over large portions of the region.
“One of the big problems we battled this year was planting delays. Over half of our crop was planted after that magic number of May 15, when yields start to decline,” said Dr. Darrin Dodds, Mississippi Extension cotton specialist. “If I had to sum up 2011 in one word, that would be ‘Challenging’ in Mississippi.”
Statewide, Mississippi’s growers increased their cotton acreage by 43% from 2010 to 2011, representing the largest percentage-increase of any state in the Mid-South. Speaking to a room full of growers and consultants at the Delta Regional Extension Center in Scott, MS, Dodds laid out the host of challenges his growers have had to overcome on all those added acres. Other Extension experts were on hand to weigh in on cotton’s all-too-familiar foes.
Weed scientist Dr. Jason Bond stressed that glyphosate-resistant pigweeds are becoming more of an issue on Mississippi’s acres. He and his colleagues spent much of the year extensively testing different herbicides to combat the pigweed epidemic.
“Residual herbicides are what we’ve got and what we’re going to have in cotton for the foreseeable future. Ignite is great, but Ignite is not what Roundup was four or five years ago. So even when the new technologies come, when dicamba-tolerant cotton and 2,4-D-tolerant cotton gets here, we’re still going to rely on the residual herbicides,” Bond said.
Not all the news from the DREC Field Day was doom and gloom, however. Just three years after lygus pests threatened to drive Mid-South cotton growers into planting other crops, the tone has changed in the Delta region. Entomologists believe that new technologies and changing cultural practices have had a positive impact on the war on plant bugs.
In 2008, some growers in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi were spending as much as $65 an acre on plant bugs alone. A regional shift into corn acreage played no small role in attracting the pest, which would migrate into nearby cotton fields once the corn had dried down. As more acres shifted out of corn and into cotton this year, that migration of plant bugs into the “sink host” of cotton has dwindled.
Entomologist Dr. Jeff Gore also cites new chemistry for having a positive impact this season. In particular, he says, studies have shown Diamond insecticide increased yields anywhere from 150 to 300 pounds in some fields.
“Growers won’t see the real benefits of Diamond until about 10 days or two weeks. The reason for that is that the Diamond has some impacts on adults, but the smaller the nymphs are, the easier they are to control. And Diamond has some impact on the reproduction of adults, its reducing the number of eggs that they lay and the percentage of those eggs that hatch,” Gore said.
Researcher Dr. Ted Wallace also had good news for cotton growers in the region. Through his work with Mississippi State, Wallace has made great strides in producing cotton varieties that will be resistant to reniform nematodes.
“It won’t be long until we have a variety that’s resistant or near immune to reniform,” Wallace said.
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