New Varieties Provide Yield and Quality Upgrades Vital for Profitability

As cotton producers are well aware, the cost of inputs and the cost of a pound of cotton have recently been moving in opposite directions.

While the price of fuel, fertilizer and equipment has risen sharply over the years, the price of cotton being traded on the market has stayed largely the same. When prices are floundering, a cotton producer has only one favorable variable: superior cotton varieties.

Advertisement

That’s why representatives at Bayer CropScience say they are introducing four new varieties in 2015, including two developed specifically to fit in the Mid-South and Southeast, and two developed to fit on Southwest acreage. The idea, according to Bayer CropScience Regional Agronomists Josh Mayfield and Kenny Melton, is to improve upon existing varieties with a select few new variety introductions each year.

Such is the case with ST 5115GLT, a medium-maturing variety that is comparable to ST 4747GLB2 in terms of its wide adaptability across the Cotton Belt, and with FM 1900GLT, which is very comparable to existing FiberMax variety FM 2484B2RF.

New Stoneville Options

Top Articles
Make a Pre-Planting Checklist

“ST 5115GLT is widely adapted across the Mid-South, Southeast and Mid-Atlantic,” Mayfield says. “It has a lot of characteristics we need in the eastern Cotton Belt – good vigor, smooth leaf and medium maturity. It’s a very strong yielder, with a slightly higher gin turnout than ST 4747GLB2.”

Stoneville’s other 2015 introduction, ST 6182GLT, is also being touted for its gin turnout.

“This new variety is tall and lanky, and it just really yields cotton in the end,” Mayfield. “It really sets the bar for high gin turnout. We’ve not seen a Stoneville variety come close to the high turnout, the high lint-percent, that this variety has.”

The full-maturing variety does well on irrigated as well as dryland acreage, and performs very well on sandy soils, according to Mayfield. It is targeted for full-season scenarios from South Texas to the Atlantic coast.

“It’s given us every indication that it’s a very good fit on dryland, irrigated, and across a lot of different soil types, even in the same field,” says Mayfield.

Enhancing the FiberMax Brand

“The FM 1900GLT is a new TwinLink variety for all of West Texas and Southwestern Oklahoma,” says Melton. “Its yield has been right with, or even better than, FM 2484B2F. Its fiber quality is as good as or better than FM 2484B2F. And it is tighter in the burr than FM 2484B2F, as well as other new TwinLink varieties.”

Similarly, FM 2007GLT is a new 2015 introduction that Melton says will offer improved characteristics to Texas producers. The early-medium-maturing variety emerged from Bayer CropScience’s South Texas breeding program, and will be targeted for Coastal Bend acreage as well as most of South and East Texas and into the Rolling Plains.

“We’re happy to offer those growers the fiber quality that this variety brings, while also being tighter in the burr than what growers might expect,” Melton says.

Bayer CropScience agronomists say FM 2007GLT offers yield and quality improvements over FiberMax staples FM 1944GLB2 and FM 8270GLB2.

0