COTTON'S AGENDA

Arresting Resistance

 
Herbicide resistance is a growing threat to efficient cotton production. The National Cotton Council (NCC) is escalating its educational effort to help its member producers address this concern.

How has the NCC communicated thus far?

The NCC has emphasized herbicide resistance management in a variety of ways. It has been a major program topic at the past four NCC-coordinated Beltwide Cotton Conferences. Expert weed scientists provided information to help producers adjust their weed management programs to manage resistant weeds and to delay or hopefully avoid the development of resistant weeds.

Herbicide resistance management was discussed during a series of NCC-coordinated “best management practices” forums in the Mid-South and Texas. In addition, the NCC has contributed information in several publications that have been distributed to its members and developed a “Weed Resistance” DVD. The DVD enabled producers to share their on-farm experiences with herbicide-resistant weeds, describe the significant change that herbicide-resistant weeds had forced on their operations, and encourage those producers who had yet to encounter herbicide-resistant weeds in their fields to be proactive in avoiding the problem. More than 2,500 copies of the DVD were mailed out to producer leaders, Extension scientists and interest organizations. The DVD can be easily accessed from the NCC’s Web site at http://www.cotton.org/tech/pest/index.cfm.

At that page, producers also can access a weed resistance learning module developed in cooperation with weed scientists across the Cotton Belt as well as a Cotton Incorporated technical publication. The learning module provides a delivery system that allows interactive participation. It also explains how herbicides work and their modes of action; concepts of herbicide resistance; and how to identify herbicide resistance in the field. In addition, the module offers management tips such as: 1) rotating herbicides and using mixtures or sequential applications of herbicides with different modes of action, 2) vigilant scouting of weeds that may have withstood early season herbicide treatments and 3) preventing weeds from setting seed during harvest.

Are additional tools being developed?

Future plans include updates to the herbicide-resistance module to incorporate the most recent scientific research and the development of another DVD. The second DVD will be presented in chapters with a menu of topics. It will include multiple short topics combined into one video for the viewer to choose and view. Topics  range from some biology of particular weeds to field tours of Extension demonstration plots.

The goal is to provide the appropriate information that enables our members to make informed decisions and identify management strategies most appropriate for their operations. We realize that weed management is not a “one shoe fits all” plan, and that one producer may use different weed management strategies for different fields. We want to make sure our members have the best information available as they develop their own individual weed management strategies.

Mark Lange is president and chief executive officer of the National Cotton Council of America. He and other NCC leaders contribute columns on this Cotton Farming page.