FIELD TEST

Early Rains Helped Agricenter’s ‘10 Crop

What a difference a year makes! Last year we could not get the rain to stop, and this year we couldn’t get the rain to start. One of the things that really helped our cotton this year was that we did have rain around planting.  This gave our crop a very good start and probably helped more in the long run by giving us a good root structure.

Even though we missed most of the pop-up showers during the season, our cotton never really showed any visual signs of moisture stress.   

From May 1 until planting, the Agricenter received 13.4 inches of rainfall. With the torrential rains in the surrounding area on May 1, the Wolf River, which runs through our property, came out of its banks. A lot of our fields were underwater, but the water receded in a couple of days.

This year’s trial was planted on May 27 and harvested on Oct. 20. During the growing season, we received 10.5 inches of rainfall, and 4.5 inches of rainfall came in one day. DD60s averaged 23.5 heat units for the months of June and July, and 24.5 heat units in August.
Some of our test plots received eight applications of different insecticides for cotton bollworm, tobacco budworm and fall armyworm control. We seemed to have several major insect flights this year, and it was common to see eggs, larvae and adults at the same time.

Agricenter represents just one location and the data presented here corresponds to the growing conditions that we had this year on that particular location planted on a certain date.

The Agricenter and I would like to thank everyone for their support in fulfilling our commitment to the agricultural industry. We will be having our field day on July 28, 2011. Contact us if you would like to participate and if you ever find your way by the Agricenter, be sure to stop by and visit.

Bruce Kirksey is the Director of Research for Agricenter International in Memphis, Tenn. Contact him by e-mail at bkirksey@agricenter.org or call (901) 757-7754.