I started planting trials looking at seed treatments and seed quality April 16th.  While I don’t think that is necessarily a wise decision for those NOT trying to stress their cotton, I had plants emerged by the 23rd of April and most treatments are quite healthy.  Many in the area started last week.  While my team paused planting for a week after the 16th,  we began planting as much as we could last week and at the moment we have planted our early Official Variety Trial in Jackson (April 23rd), our Ridgely Official Variety Trial (April 28th), our Gift Official Variety Trial (April 29th), and our Grand Junction Official Variety Trial (May 6th).  As I write this, we are working on planting several other trials here in Jackson.  Still, Tennessee’s cotton acres are well-under halfway planted.  In this blog, I highlight a few last minute decisions that you can make to help make your crop more profitable in 2025.

During the winter meeting season, my central theme was optimizing inputs to maximize returns.  The first input I addressed in that presentation is the one I want to focus on today- seeding rates. In the next few paragraphs, I’m going to talk about seeding rates and plant stands.  Please recognize the difference between these two terms- in order to achieve a given plant stand, our seeding rate will likely need to be 20 to 30% more than our target plant stand, depending upon planting conditions and seed quality. Please be sure to interpret the numbers I mention below appropriately.

Additionally, understand that I am going to be mentioning plants per row foot quite a bit- but when I mention plants per row foot, I’m talking about 38″ rows.  I’ll also mention plant per acre number, and if you are on 30 inch rows or on some alternate or skip row pattern, you will need to convert the plant per acre number to the plant per row foot number on your row spacing. In short, 2 plants per row foot on 38″ rows converts to 1.5 plants per row foot on 30″ rows.  If you do not convert the plant per row foot number to your row spacing, you will likely plant far, far more seed than required.

Seeding rates have been evaluated extensively throughout the belt.  While the minimum recommended plant stand in more southern states is often considered to be one plant per row foot, our research suggests that number is higher than one plant per row foot in Tennessee.  I often mention two plants per row foot, but the data that Dr. Shawn Butler generated in his PhD project would suggest it may be closer to 1.5 plants per row foot on 38″ rows.  Still, for this conversation, and to err on the side of too many as opposed to not enough, let us assume that we actually do need two plants per row foot.  With that assumption, our target final plant stand, per acre, regardless of row spacing, should be 27,500 plants per acre.  Assuming 90% germ and an 85% emergence rate of the healthy seeds, we would need to plant 36,000 seed per acre.   Please keep in mind this would represent a very conservative estimate of the minimum.  The actual number of required plants per acre and seeding rate to achieve 95% of your yield potential is likely lower, given Dr. Butler’s data and the fact that these trials were conducted with a variety that had less strength of terminal and lower yield potential than most of what we plant today.

Based on conversations I’ve had with growers over the past several years, I would estimate our average planting rate for the state to be close to 47,000 seed per acre. If we were to drop to 37,500, we would save approximately 20% of our seed costs.  But as I mentioned during the production season, this 20% savings pales in comparison to the savings you will realize in other inputs.  With less plant-to-plant competition, I would expect better light penetration into the canopy and higher first position fruit retention.  This has the potential to actually make your crop earlier- not later, as some might argue (in my opinion, earliness will be maximized somewhere near the two plant per row foot mark, with delays in maturity noted as we move to fewer than one plant per row foot and over three plants per row foot).  Pix management will be easier, with less PGR required.  Plant and stink bugs will be less of a concern late in the year, as they will not be as attracted to that acre.  Disease will be less of a concern.  Defoliation will be easier. As you can see, these benefits accrue.

One final point to push you into dropping seeding rates to closer to 36,000 seed per acre.  As you know, when determining if we need to replant, we often focus on the number of skips larger than three feet in length. We are not concerned with skips less than three feet, because we know the plants on either end and side of that skip will add additional monopodial branches and compensate for that gap.  This compensation has allowed some in our area to adopt wide-row skip patterns with little to no reduction in yield potential.  We can capitalize on the input savings of the skip row pattern approach by simply increasing the amount of space each plant has within each row.  

Step one in reeling in our ballooning input costs is to properly select seeding rates.  I challenge you to look closely at how many seed per acre you are dropping and at least try lower seeding rates on strips across a few fields.  Based on the data my team has collected, I believe you will find it to be very difficult to identify those reduced seeding rate strips with your yield map at the end of the year.