New Product Evaluator Program: Season 15

Bollgard 3 Cotton Being Evaluated For The Class Of ’23.
Eric Best, Deltapine cotton product manager, evaluates a New Product Evaluator plot in Georgia.

The Deltapine seed brand’s New Product Evaluator (NPE) program kicks off its 15th season in 2022, celebrating a milestone of helping raise yield potential and improving production across the Cotton Belt. During this momentous year, the 13 Class of ’23 cotton variety candidates under evaluation will include an especially diverse lineup of maturities and pest trait platforms.

“The cotton variety candidates being evaluated this season showcase the diversity of elite germplasm and strength of the Deltapine cotton breeding and development program, which allows us to test this many products across a wide range of germplasm backgrounds, biotech trait platforms, maturity and native trait combinations,” said Eric Best, Deltapine cotton product manager. “Each of these variety candidates has the potential to be in a Deltapine bag for planting in 2023.”

Evaluating New Candidates

Deltapine NPE growers across the Cotton Belt will have the opportunity to evaluate four Bollgard 3 ThryvOn Cotton with XtendFlex Technology cotton variety candidates in stewarded field trials. These four candidates range from early maturity to mid-full maturity and have potential to increase the Deltapine Bollgard 3 ThryvOn Cotton with XtendFlex Technology product offering. Pending regulatory approvals, ThryvOn Technology will be the industry’s first biotech trait to provide protection against tarnished plant bugs and thrips species.

In West Texas, the Deltapine Texas cotton breeding program investments are paying off as candidates with regionally adapted genetics are advanced into the NPE program. The southwestern NPE growers will evaluate two Bollgard 3 XtendFlex and two XtendFlex cotton variety candidates showing outstanding performance potential in this region. 

For the Mid-South and Southeast, there are five Bollgard 3 XtendFlex variety candidates to evaluate this season, including two lines with root-knot nematode resistance. The five candidates range from early maturity to mid-full maturity and will have high yield potential similar to the past two classes of Deltapine brand commercial cotton varieties.

Program Advancements

“Nothing advances in this program unless it offers an improvement or something extra over current Deltapine products in the market, and each new cotton variety is evaluated and approved for performance by the Deltapine NPE growers,” Best said.

Since 2008, the Deltapine NPE program has become an industry standard for involving cotton growers in pre-commercial cotton variety evaluation and commercialization.

Milestones of the program since 2008 include:

Launch of DP 1044 B2RF in 2010 – the best-selling cotton variety in Texas for four years.

→ Bollgard II XtendFlex cotton varieties launched in 2015.

→ DP 1646 B2XF launched in 2016, which quickly became the top-planted variety in the United States.

→ Bollgard 3 XtendFlex cotton varieties launched in 2018.

→ Class of ’20 and ’21 cotton varieties raise the bar on Bollgard 3 XtendFlex performance potential.

→ Deltapine Bollgard 3 ThryvOn Cotton with XtendFlex Technology cotton varieties advanced in 2021.

NPE Grower Reviews

NPE growers involved in the program have trust and confidence in new Deltapine products. Here is what NPE growers had to say going into year 15:

Coley Bailey in Mississippi said, “The NPE program has allowed me to adopt new varieties quicker and plant more acres to them because I have the confidence they can perform, and the variety performance is getting better when you look at where we were in yield potential in 2008 compared to today.”

Jason Rackler in West Texas said, “The NPE program allows growers to work with Deltapine to identify the various challenges we face on our West Texas dryland and irrigated acres. As a result of this partnership, Deltapine continues to focus on delivering variety candidates that fit our diverse region. We look forward to continuing this partnership the next 15 years.”

Neil Lee in Georgia said, “Local growers stop by NPE plots and the gin to ask about the varieties because they are confident in the real-farm information being collected on these new varieties.”

More than 200 NPE growers across all regions of the Cotton Belt will plant and evaluate large-scale plots of Deltapine Class of ’23 variety candidates this season, growing and managing them through harvest. Their feedback will help determine the Class of ’23 cotton varieties, which will be announced in December. For more about the Deltapine NPE program, visit Deltapine.com/NPE. 


Deltapine contributed this information.

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