Early Burndown. The challenge to burning down grasses before planting has become increasingly difficult in the last half dozen years. There are two reasons for the sketchy grass control with the traditional burndown application of glyphosate + dicamba. First, the continued evolution of glyphosate resistance in ryegrass, junglerice, johnsongrass and goosegrass have made that “go-to” burndown application inconsistent. Second, we have now documented that dicamba is consistently causing glyphosate to provide poor grass control. As such our recommendation has been to change the “go-to” burndown from glyphosate + dicamba to glyphosate + clethodim.
The problem with using glyphosate + clethodim is that the burndown will miss, or be weak on, some broadleaf weeds, most notably glyphosate-resistant horseweed. During the meeting circuit this winter, several have asked “Is there a herbicide that can be added to glyphosate + clethodim that will provide horseweed control while not sacrificing grass control?” This caused me to go back and examine burndown research we conducted 4 and 5 years ago with Elevore and Verdict. Continue reading
Our second series of presentations for the 2021 Cotton Focus Video Series are from Dr. Larry Steckel’s program. Dr. Steckel and his PhD student, Clay Perkins, will be presenting two topics for us- the first is ‘Grass Management in Xtend and Enlist Cotton’ and the second is ‘Characterization and Management of Glyphosate-Resistant Junglerice’. We are extremely blessed to have Dr. Steckel in Tennessee and I’m excited to have these two very important topics covered, especially after the challenges we’ve faced with grasses in recent years.
To kick off the 2021 Cotton Focus Video Series, we are extremely grateful to have two videos from Dr. Scott Stewart- one discussing updates on thrips and one discussing updates bollworms. As many of you know, Dr. Scott Stewart has recently accepted a new role as the Director of the West Tennessee Research and Education Center. While we all hate to see him leave his current position, we are definitely excited to have him remaining on the team and I am very thankful he was willing to take time out of his busy schedule to still develop and deliver this content! Dr. Stewart has also recorded a presentation on plant bugs; we will be posting that a little later in this series.
After much deliberation, the decision was made earlier this year to move Cotton Focus to a VIRTUAL event. Instead of making all presentations within a single day, we will be posting a few presentations each week on this blog (
There are two VIRTUAL county meetings coming up next week that many of you may be interested in attending.