The 2023 Cotton Tour will be held Sept. 13, 2023 at the West Tennessee Research and Education Center (605 Airways Blvd, Jackson, TN 38305). Pesticide recertification and CCA points will be available. Lunch will be provided. We will also be touching on a few other commodities (soybeans, corn). An agenda will be posted to the blog in the coming weeks. Look forward to seeing you there!
Temperatures this week have really pushed our crop; node above white flower counts are crashing and bolls are hardening in our earliest crop well-up past the middle of the plant. Many of those who have the option of irrigating their cotton have called this week to discuss if the rewards for irrigating outweigh the risks. In this blog, I try to outline those discussions to help those in a similar situation. Continue reading
The results of the 2023 Official Variety Trials; Wheat are in. This information will be available on our variety testing site search.utcrops.com soon and can also be accessed through your local County Extension Office.
Click on the tables below to open as a PDF. You may then zoom in to better see the results.
Corn and soybeans were up; wheat and cotton were down for the week.
This week the December corn contract established a new low at $4.73 ½, before closing up the last three trading days of the week. US yield estimates remain a hot topic of debate between market analysts, as rains at the end of July through August have improved crop conditions across a large portion of the growing area. As of August 15th, corn production in drought is estimated at 42%, with 5% in extreme drought, 15% in severe drought, and 22% in moderate drought. Currently, the USDA estimates the national average corn yield at 175.1 bu acre. Most analysts have a national yield closer to 177 bu/acre. Based on USDA’s current harvested acre projection of 86.322 million acres, a 1.9 bu/acre increase in national average yield would increase US production by 164 million bushels. Continue reading at Tennessee Market Highlights.
Bollworm egg lay across West TN is rapidly increasing. Our trap catches across the survey area are steadily increasing and I’ve started receiving several calls about large numbers of eggs . Fortunately, the vast majority of our cotton is Widestrike 3 (WS3) or Bollgard 3 (BG3). To date, I’ve had no reports of slippage through any three gene cotton in Tennessee. Going forward, our threshold for foliar applications targeting bollworms occurs when a combination of square and boll sampling shows 6 percent or more injury (e.g., 3 percent square injury and 3 percent boll injury, 4 percent square injury and 2 percent boll injury, etc.) and/or 4 or more larvae are present per 100 plants. Treatments based on egg lay is not recommended in 3 gene cottons. My colleague at Mississippi State, Dr. Tyler Towles, summarized our regional data (Fig. 1) demonstrating no economic benefit to making a diamide application to 3 gene cottons. Unless you’re at threshold, save the money on the diamide spray in 3 gene cotton.
One final note, as we are nearing the end of the 2023 growing season below are insect termination timings based on DD60s.
| Location | CEW | TBW |
| Hardeman (Bolivar) | 6 | 0 |
| Fayette (Whiteville) | 29 | 0 |
| Fayette (Somerville) | 26 | 0 |
| Shelby (Millington) | 42 | 0 |
| Tipton (Covington) | 2 | 0 |
| Tipton (North) | 20 | 0 |
| Lauderdale (Golddust) | 35 | 0 |
| Haywood(West) | 8 | 1 |
| Haywood (Brownsville) | 67 | 0 |
| Madison (WTREC) | 41 | 1 |
| Madison (North) | 35 | 0 |
| Crockett (Alamo) | 1 | 1 |
| Crockett (Friendship) | 51 | 0 |
| Dyer (King Rd) | 48 | 1 |
| Dyer (Dyersburg) | 61 | 0 |
| Lake (Ridgely) | 35 | 2 |
| Gibson (Trenton) | 98 | 0 |
| Gibson (Milan Rec) | 4 | 0 |
| Carroll (Coleman Farm) | 15 | 2 |
Corn, soybeans, and wheat were down; cotton was up for the week.
On Friday, August 11, the USDA released FSA Crop Acreage Data and Crop Production and WASDE reports. Overall, the reports were neutral to bearish for corn, soybean, and wheat prices and bullish for cotton prices. Continue reading at Tennessee Market Highlights.
| Location | CEW | TBW |
| Hardeman (Bolivar) | 3 | 0 |
| Fayette (Whiteville) | 31 | 1 |
| Fayette (Somerville) | 12 | 0 |
| Shelby (Millington) | 36 | 0 |
| Tipton (Covington) | 4 | 0 |
| Tipton (North) | 15 | 0 |
| Lauderdale (Golddust) | 17 | 0 |
| Haywood(West) | 21 | 1 |
| Haywood (Brownsville) | 26 | 0 |
| Madison (WTREC) | 48 | 3 |
| Madison (North) | 18 | 0 |
| Crockett (Alamo) | 1 | 2 |
| Crockett (Friendship) | 27 | 0 |
| Dyer (King Rd) | 44 | 1 |
| Dyer (Dyersburg) | 45 | 1 |
| Lake (Ridgely) | 20 | 2 |
| Gibson (Trenton) | – | – |
| Gibson (Milan Rec) | 2 | 5 |
| Carroll (Coleman Farm) | 20 | 0 |
Due to the excess rainfall we experienced over the past week, we weren’t able to reach our Trenton location. If moth numbers are exceedingly high, I’ll update the post and send out those numbers tomorrow.