The ABCs of variety selection may start with letters behind a variety name denoting insect resistance or herbicide tolerance technology, but they certainly do not end there. Beyond the letters are complex characteristics controlled by multiple genes – yield, fiber quality, stress response, disease resistance, plant type and relative maturity. “A” stands for area-appropriate. Consider performance data generated from the same area as your farm. Know specific field production constraints and choose varieties with appropriate disease resistance, nematode tolerance and moisture stress response. “B” is for broadening risk with more than one variety in more than one maturity class so harvest on large farms can be staggered. Broadened risk improves the odds of catching beneficial rains and avoiding widespread hail damage. “C” is for control. Stay grounded with input capabilities. Highhorsepower varieties in low-input situations can lead to quality problems. “Control” reminds me of the first cotton farmer to ask my advice on variety selection – my father, who passed away in May. Professional presentation of yield data did not impress him. He told me, “I can make these varieties yield. Show me something with the potential for good fiber quality. I have less control over that.”

ARKANSAS The National Agricultural Statistics Service October Crop Production report kept the yield estimate for Arkansas cotton at 1,218 lbs lint/A. Last month, I felt this estimate was too high for a number of reasons. However, as our harvest is...

Since 2010, the Importer Support Program (ISP) of the Cotton Board and Cotton Incorporated has funded annual farm tours for brands and retailers as part of a concentrated effort to educate decision makers in the supply chain about cotton...

The forecast of rains for Texas this week will be music to many farmers and ranchers ears, but the coming stormy weather is not the main El Niño event, according to a climatologist. It’s more like a prelude, said Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon, state climatologist and Regents Professor at Texas A&M University, College Station. Texas is sure to get some rainfall, Nielsen-Gammon said. There’s an upper-level disturbance moving into the southwest, and a tropical cyclone in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico should feed some moisture into the state. Though El Niño may be contributing to the storms, it’s not the beginning of the main activity: the near-normal to wetter-than-normal fall and winter that climatologists are expecting. “Everything is impacted by El Niño in some way or another,” he said. “Some aspects of this weather pattern are consistent with what we expect with an El Niño. We have a fairly active subtropical jet stream developing, which is what brings the wet weather to Texas in the wintertime. The tropical cyclone activity over the eastern Pacific is also characteristic of El Niño.”But the coming wet weather doesn’t mean things have been normal so far, he said. At least 22 counties in Texas have received record low rainfall in the past 90 days. Rainfall the third week in October may help, but it is only expected to average about 2 inches statewide, which may not be enough to end the drought many parts of the state are experiencing.

Ken Legé PhytoGen Cotton Development Specialist Lubbock, Texas   Prior to joining PhytoGen, I had noticed that the germplasm coming out of PhytoGen’s robust West Texas breeding program that will serve the entire Southwest was producing high, consistent yields and was well suited...

On Sept. 10, 2015, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released new rules that could directly affect cotton gins across the country by next year. Most people don’t think of cotton gins as producers of food, but since 2003,...

LA Radio News Sept 29

* Significant increase of production for a range of pest control and seed treatments for plant vigor * Expansion signals company's commitment to solutions beyond conventional crop protection​​ * ​Inaugural event of expanded production site in Littlehampton, UK ​Littlehampton, United Kingdom, October...

September 30th, 2015 Honorees Paved the Way for New Generation of Innovative Cotton Industry Leaders Memphis, TN- Cotton Incorporated announced today the 2015 class of the Cotton Research and Promotion Hall of Fame. The program, now in its second...

Cotton Incorporated has launched a new Web site to give the cotton growing community quick and easy access to important cotton information. Cotton Cultivated provides a portal that integrates Web sites, downloadable documents, social media and real-time news feeds...

If a cotton producer has questions about weed resistance, he will find the answers at the Beltwide Cotton Conferences (BWCC) on Jan. 5-7 in New Orleans. This will be one of the key topics of discussion at the Consultants Conference, as well as the Technical Conferences. Obviously, other issues of interest are on the schedule, but perhaps none is timelier than this expensive problem. Most observers agree that cotton producers have made remarkable progress in understanding this situation and implementing workable strategies. But, there is still much to learn as new technologies become available to cotton production. “The good news is that we’ve made great progress in controlling resistant pigweed in cotton,” says Tom Barber, Arkansas Extension weed specialist and chairman of the BWCC Weed Science Conference. “I think our farmers completely understand the importance of overlapping residual herbicide applications. What has us concerned is some PPO (protoporphyrinogen oxidase) resistance that we’ve discovered in seven counties in Arkansas. Fortunately, they’ve all been in soybean fields and not cotton.” Barber says the big concern is will Reflex herbicide still give farmers the necessary control if the PPO resistance problem moves into cotton fields.

A brief glance at the face of cotton production would indicate that there are a lot of older men growing the crop. But, a deeper look reveals that a new and diverse generation of cotton producers is helping to...

  Lee Hutchins Crop Management, Inc. Sinton, Texas I was raised in north Louisiana in south Bossier Parish and started checking cotton for my aunt and uncle when I was 14. I later graduated from LSU and served in the Army. After...

The National Cotton Council (NCC) is confident persistence will pay off when industry members pursue a zero tolerance goal regarding contamination of seed cotton and lint. Why is contamination such a threat? The NCC believes contamination prevention is so important that...