Dwight Harrison worked his entire life to finally see this kind of cotton field. Those were his thoughts last summer as he looked out on his 160-acre “problem field” on the edge of Cardwell, Mo. Every farm has one – a field that falls short of its potential every time. But in 2005, Dwight got what he always wanted – perfection, or mighty close to it.
Meanwhile, to the south at Sidon, Miss., Teddy Sims looks at the results of last year’s work and thinks about what might have been – if hurricanes would just stay out in the Gulf or better yet, clear out in the Atlantic. Still, he knows what went right last year and what he will try again this year.
Maybe Mother Nature will once again give, but hopefully this time take less back. Just north of Tupelo, Miss., Eric Scott is excited about a new technology he tried last year and another new one he will be trying this year. What Harrison, Sims and Scott have in common, besides a love of farming cotton, is confidence in new technologies.
All three used a Harpin protein Plant Health Regulator available for the first time in 2005, and Scott is excited about coupling it with the new Flex cotton varieties being introduced for 2006.
Perfection At Last
“That 160-acre field was uniform and healthy from one side to the other without any weak spots,” Harrison says of the results last year. “It’s always been a good field, but it’s had some weak spots, and even dead spots, until now. This year it was beautiful, healthy and consistent. The only difference in 2005 was using N-Hibit and ProAct.”
Harrison had N-Hibit seed treatment applied to Stoneville’s ST 5599BR seed he planted in that field, followed by ProAct Plant Health Regulator in his second pass with glyphosate. The Harpin proteins (Harp-N-Tek) in N-Hibit and ProAct link to receptors plants have developed as a kind of early warning system that disease pathogens are attacking.
The plant turns on its self-defense and growth systems, and the result is improved vigor, stamina, nutrient uptake and reproductive growth. With N-Hibit this reaction will include a reduction in nematode eggs by half. Data show a further reduction when ProAct follows N-Hibit.
Harrison is all too familiar with nematode problems.
“This is very light, sandy soil that cotton likes, but so do nematodes,” Harrison says. “I’ve planted 5599 there for three years because it includes some genetic resistance to nematodes. “Last year it produced 1,200 pounds of lint per acre, and that was the best for that field until this year. “But I still felt that I needed something more against nematodes. This year the yield went up to 1,250 pounds per acre.”
It’s hard to argue against the numbers. At 56 cents a pound and an average 50-pound/acre yield increase, that’s $28 for each of the 160 acres, after an investment of about $10/acre for the NHibit and ProAct.
Those Were No Ladies
Cardwell is far enough north that Hurricane Katrina only produced about 2 inches of rain at the Harrison farm, and his land was spared the backlash from Rita that affected farms farther south. Teddy Sims wishes it had been just 2 inches of rain down his way, too.
Sims believes that ProAct gave him more harvestable cotton in the aftermath of Katrina’s rampage through Mississippi than he otherwise might have delivered to the gin. But it was a tough situation to sort out. In 2004, Sims used ProAct on a small Experimental Use Permit test plot and liked the results, so he scaled it up to more than 200 acres in 2005. The fields looked great. Then came Hurricane Katrina.
“We managed to average a bale and a half, which was a fair crop considering how much cotton we lost on the ground from the wind and rain, and the fact that the top crop never had a chance to fully mature,” says Sims, who farms 1,200 acres near Sidon, just south of Greenwood, Miss.
“It could have been a lot worse, and I believe the healthier ProAct cotton helped our average.”
The ProAct was used on about 85 acres of dryland fields close to the Sims home. He considers it marginal ground. ProAct also was used on a 120- acre irrigated field along the Yazoo River in the Morgan City area that has severe nematode problems. The varieties were ST 5599 BR and DP 555 BG/RR, both with Bollgard and Roundup Ready genetics.
Consultants Like What They See
Billy Bryant, of Greenwood, is the independent crop consultant for the Sims farm. In 2005 he told Sims and most of his other farmers they should try ProAct on 200 to 300 or more acres and look for visual differences and results at harvest.
“Katrina caused wind damage on 100 percent of the acres around her and made a jumble of things,” Bryant says. “Even though ProAct went out on several thousand acres, and we know it produced some tremendous results, we were unable to get the kind of widescale comparative data we hoped would be available.”
Tucker Miller, 2004 Cotton Consultant of the Year, from Drew, Miss., shares Bryant’s view that Harpin protein is a promising new technology for cotton.
“We’ve worked with different combinations of N-Hibit and ProAct, and it’s just a matter of getting confidence with it and learning how to use it,” says Miller, who presented the findings of his own commercial-scale work with Harpin in a paper that was one of seven on ProAct during the Cotton Physiology Conference of last month’s Beltwide Cotton Conferences.
Miller’s paper noted that ProAct increased cotton lint yield in 28 of 29 data points from the demonstrations. The average increase was 68.4 pounds of lint/acre or 6.5 percent. ProAct may be tankmixed with a wide variety of other post-emergence herbicides in addition to glyphosate, and with most crop inputs.
Flexibility & Performance Needed
That kind of flexibility is very important to Eric Scott, who farms near Baldwyn, Miss. He returned to cotton this year after several years in dairy, and he’s excited about the new technologies. Scott counts his acres in the hundreds rather than thousands, and when it comes to labor, he’s the farm’s only hired hand.
“Last year I wanted to try new technologies such as ProAct, along with some proven seed varieties,” Scott says. “So I planted 200 acres between Phytogen 410RR, DP 555 BG/RR, and DP 432 RR.
“I didn’t realize ProAct is as good as it is,” says Scott. “You could really see the difference right away. My neighbors all noticed it, too. It seemed like the ProAct cotton grew faster and set on more fruit sooner.”