Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Welcome to the UGA Cotton Team's Talkin' Cotton Podcast. This is a podcast for cotton growers, county agents, industry partners and anyone else interested in learning about science-backed cotton production and pest management. Our goal is to educate you with the most up-to-date data and information all season long. Talkin' Cotton will feature guests, such as, extension specialists, research faculty, graduate students, extension agents, industry allies and many others! Let's get into the why's of puttin' on, throwin' off and cuttin' out.
Talkin' Cotton Podcast
Beyond The Shed: What Your Cotton Plants Are Really Telling You
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The Georgia cotton crop is showing signs of change as August progresses, with growers witnessing fruit shed across fields statewide. This episode dives deep into the natural processes driving cotton fruit abscission and whether you should be concerned about those squares and young bolls on the ground.
Our experts explain that even high-yielding cotton naturally sheds up to 60% of its fruit, with this process peaking between peak bloom and cutout when demand for carbohydrates is highest. Recent overcast weather has intensified this natural process, limiting the crucial solar radiation plants need. While concerning to witness, the team reassures growers that position and timing play key roles – fruit retention typically peaks around node 10, and once bolls reach two weeks of age, they're unlikely to shed regardless of conditions. Unfortunately, when sunlight becomes the limiting factor, management options are virtually non-existent.
As cotton approaches cutout, irrigation termination decisions become critical. Research shows continuing irrigation beyond cutout can waste $20-80 per acre with no yield benefit. The team provides guidance on knowing when to "pull the meter" and walk away, especially valuable during a year with tight margins and 67-68 cent cotton.
The conversation shifts to pest challenges, including bollrot (increasing with recent wet weather), stink bugs (Georgia's primary cotton pest), and the newly confirmed cotton jassid now present in over 40 Georgia counties. This tiny pest causes distinctive "hopper burn" that can be mistaken for nutritional deficiencies, particularly along field edges and equipment tracks.
With some early-planted cotton approaching defoliation as soon as late August, the team offers timely insights for navigating these late-season decisions. Join us September 3rd for the Cotton and Peanut Research Day in Tifton to see your checkoff dollars at work and discover the latest research findings from the UGA Cotton Team.
Bringing you all things cotton production and pest management. This is the Talking Cotton Podcast with the University of Georgia Cotton Team. Let's get into the whys of putting on, throwing off and cutting out, all right? Well, today is August the 13th. It's good to be back. Dr Roberts and Sarah flew solo Now. Sarah's not here, but Dr Roberts is still here. Hey, dr Roberts, I'm here. I'm here here, and then Dr John Snyder's with us as well. Dr Snyder, doing good, yeah, doing good, good, good. So Wes is going to join us here in a little bit, but real quick.
Speaker 1I always like to touch on the crop progress report. According to USDA. Also, their acreage report and yield estimates came out. I believe it was just a couple days ago, and I kind of gave USDA a hard time back when the initial planted acres report came out, because they said one million acres and I said there ain't no way. Well then their updated planted acres report was a little more on target. They had us at 840,000, I believe, and that's about right. That's about what I've heard from numerous folks. So they're in the ballpark there. But in terms of the crop itself, hey, 99 of our crop is squaring, so there's still one percent out there, that's not, apparently, which I thought I saw some this week or last week that wasn't squaring?
Speaker 1I don't think so and then, uh, 84 of our crop is set in bowls and, and I did find it interesting that the five-year average is 79%, so we're slightly ahead on that. And then they actually started including the percent of the crop that has bowls opening and as of last week that was 5% and 3% is the five-year average, so slightly ahead in terms of the crop that's setting bowls and a crop that is opening. And really, looking at the crop, they rate it as 85%. Fair to good, you know, as of right now. I would agree with that, but there's a lot that's changing out there right now.
Speaker 1It was I believe it was two weeks ago maybe, maybe three, that I was sitting there thinking that we needed us a rain. Real bad, it had gotten really hot and very dry out there and we started getting rain, but it hadn't really stopped. And, uh, along with that has come some overcast conditions. I mean, even in the mornings and periods of the afternoon there's a lot of clouds out there and just spitting rain. I mean, I'm doing a little bit of irrigation work with some of the water team and we've got a little rain gauge and I looked at it in the last week. Four out of the last seven days has had some kind of measurable rainfall, but that's not including just the days that are that are overcast and look like it is going to rain, you know. So certainly things are changing and you know it's a normal. It feels like it's a more normal August. What we typically see, and kind of once we get into September, is when it starts drying out.
Fruit Retention and Weather Impact
Speaker 1I asked Dr Schneider if he wanted to touch on some of the impacts of this weather on fruit retention in this crop, because really I'm starting to get a good many phone calls about fruit shed and seeing all these squares and young bowls on the ground and, you know, trying to calm people down and tell them that, hey, that's a part of growing cotton, you know, but especially on some of this stuff that's cutting out or getting close to it, that's not exactly what you want to see is a pile of fruit on the ground, you know. So let's talk a little bit about uh, what, what kind of pattern we're in and the impacts on on the fruit load on this crop. All right, well.
Speaker 3Thank you, camp. So whenever we talk about fruit retention, I do think it's important to kind of distinguish between the different types of things that can cause fruit shed, and some of those things are just kind of a normal process, whereas others it's kind of an environmental type of stress. And so just real quickly, I'm just going to tick through a few things here real quick. So really the first thing that I want to do is just kind of walk through some of the things that can increase fruit abscission and kind of. The first thing here that I want to address is timing. So when we think about timing, we think about it in terms of the time of the year, and that's one thing that can affect it.
Speaker 3This time of year we're in a lot of our crop. You mentioned how some of it, where we've got some open bowls out there, I would say we're in a lot of what I've looked at. We're between peak bloom and cut out, yeah, somewhere in that neighborhood, and so that's really whenever there's the greatest demand on that crop, yeah. When we start talking about carbohydrates, yeah, and so you've got this canopy, that a good portion of the canopy, especially lower, lower in it, is kind of on the decline. But you've got the greatest demand for resources. So at peak bloom you're going to lose some fruit. That's just sort of a natural process. Even in high yielding cotton we can lose 40 percent. I'm sorry you lose 60 percent of all squares that that crop produced. Maybe only you know. Like I say, only 40% make it to the end. So when is that going to be the most pronounced? It'll be right now. Right, we've got peak bloom, some of that younger cotton. None of this applies, right, right.
Speaker 1If you have cotton, that's at first bloom and you're losing fruit, you may have another problem. That's right. So that's an, and so it's a. That's a.
Speaker 3That's an important distinction to make yep, and that's something that may fall in philip roberts territory as opposed to mine, right, um, but yeah, so, uh, you know, if you look at like we look at timing after flowering and I think this was a good thing that was brought up at our well at that mid-year meeting yeah, uh, one I I think it was Bart that mentioned you know, once a fruit gets past a certain stage, it's not going to shed. Yeah, in the first few days after flowering, that's when that bowl is most likely to shed and it's going to be covered up by those bracts. It'll look a lot like a square, yeah, because it's just covered up there. But in those first few days that's where you're most likely to see fruit shed. Once you get past two weeks, it would be very unusual to see fruit shed almost no matter what you do to it. So that's one thing.
Speaker 3The other thing is position on the plant and that type of thing. So typically fruit retention peaks at about that 10th node, maybe a few other nodes there, and then if you go below that or above that, you're going to see lower fruit retention. The other thing is along the fruiting branch the further away we get from that main stem, the more likely we are to see fruit shed as well. Yeah, so I think all of that again is is is important to understand. And the more flowers you have out there, right, yeah, it, you know we go. If you think about peak bloom, it's going to understand. And the more flowers you have out there, right, yeah, if you think about peak bloom, it's going to be in that first week. After that, you're going to see a lot of young bowls on the ground.
Speaker 4Yeah.
Speaker 3Just naturally. But then what you're talking about is these environmental stresses, right, and one of the things that we know will cause fruit shed almost quicker than anything else that we talk about is heavy overcast weather. Yeah, all right, yeah, so a lot of the research that was done on fruit shed, on fruit abscission, that was done, you know it was done back in the 80s, right, but what they would do is, you know, so you'd see these huge shedding events following all this cloudy weather. Yeah, so they would take plants and they'd put them in a chamber with like real low light conditions. Yeah, but they would tag every square and they would track it. So they were able to say, hey, if we got three days of and I mean their light intensities in the chamber were probably extremely low, right, three days, there was a 100% chance that they could get that fruit to shed.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah, a 100% chance that they could get that fruit to shed. You know so there's always potential for compensation at other places along the plant. So you lose that first position. The plant may compensate by setting a higher portion of the second position. So there's kind of a balance there. Definitely, you know, you would expect to see higher fruit shed after extreme overcast weather, which is a lot of what we've been seeing.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, just thinking about I know some of the work you've done has looked at elevated nighttime temperatures and the impact on retention and even the mass of those bowls. So if you, let's say, we shed a first position right because it's overcast weather and the plant is able to compensate with a second or a third, is the mass of that bowl going to equal what it would have at a at a first position, I guess or be comparable?
Speaker 3Right. So it may not, but if you have higher retention and what will typically happen is that second position bowl will be slightly heavier than a second position bowl would have been If you had the first position- Exactly Right. Because the plant's just redistributing that carbon Right.
Speaker 1And looking at a lot of the wide row work that we did, you know one of the biggest keys to fruit retention is solar radiation, right? And you look at those wide row plots hadn't 50 retention for the whole year? You know, over 50. But then you start talking about okay, well, a plant can make what it's going to make on 40 percent, whether it's three bale cotton or two bale cotton. Yeah, right, right, so I mean it's yes. There are situations where it's like, all right, maybe we ought to be a little bit concerned here, like I think it was last year.
Speaker 1Hurricane debbie came through. It was the first part of august and I went to midville and we were getting ready for a defoliation training and of course it was a great illustration because we were mixing, missing six first positions in the top of that plant, because the plant was cut out when that hurricane come in and dumped 10 inches of rain and three days overcast weather and it shucked a bunch of fruit. A lot of the defoliation decisions have to do with first position bowls and so we had a gap in that plant right, and so it was a great illustration to show county agents. But of course I'd go talk to anthony. I'm like, hey, man, like we may have a problem out here, you know, and so that. But those are the major calls that I'm getting. Of course, these guys are walking fields and seeing all this stuff on the ground, but sure, and you're more.
Speaker 3You know, typically you're you're more aggressively growing plants, right. You couple that with with the overcast conditions, you tend to see it a little bit more, yeah, yeah, so because you've got shading within the canopy as well, right.
Speaker 1And then you add this on top of it yeah, yeah, so you know, and talking about I got a call from some agents last week and even just the nature of a cotton plant, right, I mean, you think about a cotton plant where it's native, it's a tree, okay. And what's a tree going to do whenever conditions aren't favorable for fruit production or seed production? Really, dr Roberts? What is the number one goal of every living organism on this earth? Reproduce, reproduce, okay. Production. Really, dr roberts? What is the number one goal of every living organism on this earth? Reproduce, reproduce, okay. So right now, conditions aren't favorable for reproduction in a cotton plant, so it's going to throw this fruit off in favor of something later.
Speaker 3Yep, it's in favor of survival, right, right. If it's going to be around next year, that's right. Things are good.
Speaker 1Yeah can produce offspring, then, yeah, that's right. And so, talking to some of these agents and some of these guys that are concerned about this, I walk through like, okay, you think about it like it's a tree, right, it's it's throwing this stuff off, thinking all right down the road I'm gonna save this for later, kind of thing, and it's just. Of course, that's not how we grow it, right, but so it makes for some problematic situations. But in terms of management, right, is there anything that we can do, or we just got to hope the sun comes out?
Speaker 3That's pretty much it.
Speaker 1That's what I figured.
Speaker 3And, like I say, your decisions on growth management.
Speaker 1That's already been made Right, Right Well if it's a cut out, which a lot, which a lot of it is, or getting close to that with that right.
Speaker 1And so I mean some of these agents call and they're oh well, we're losing all this fruit. Do we need to go put a shot of pigs on to try to increase retention and and stuff like that? And I I tell them I'm like, hey, the key is to get out there and look at it like respond to what the crop does, right, and if it's still actively growing, then yeah, let's consider something like that. But if it's cut out, it's not growing anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 3So if you're cut back on the main energy source, there's not a whole lot you can do about that.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, and I mean, right now, the most limiting source of energy is sunlight. Source of energy is sunlight, you know. I mean it's taking up the fertility that's there. That it's going to get. You know, you've used all, most of your inputs, you know stuff like that, and so it's uh, I don't know. It's not real fun going out there and seeing a pile of fruit on the ground, but a lot of times that is the uh, that's the cost of doing business, as they say yep, right, so what, what else? You got anything else over there, dr Snyder, you was thinking about? I think?
Speaker 3I'm good, yeah, hop in on some other stuff.
Speaker 1Yeah, something's going to come up because we're going to move over there to Wes. Wes, thanks for coming in. I told everybody you were coming because I knew you were going to come, but somebody else walked in and I wasn't real confident.
Speaker 4You never know. You never know who's going to show up. We still don't know who's here.
Speaker 2We made him leave. We could have a contest to see if listeners can guess.
Speaker 1Oh, they know you ain't got to say nothing. Every time he walks in he's late. It don't matter if it's in his podcast or not. We're glad he's here. That's right. We're talking about Dr Bob Kim, right? Everybody. Dr Bob Kim, right the Rodney Dangerfield of the cotton team, as he said earlier today. But I like to remind him he can't be the man in every crop.
Speaker 4Why not? Don't take that away from him With peanuts.
Speaker 1He's the man. Everybody wants to know what fungicide to spray With corn. You the man. Southern rust tar spot Everybody's looking to Georgia. They want to know. You know who's first right, that's a big deal Soybean rust. But somebody, somebody beat you to the punch on that one, I think, as of like yesterday right.
Speaker 5Yeah, somebody from Auburn snuck down into Florida.
Speaker 1They crossed state lines county delivery system, right so Wes. Ooh, they cross state lines, county delivery system, right so Wes. I love you too, dr Hatton.
Speaker 5Hey, thanks man. I'm just glad to be here. Thanks for having me. I sent you a heart emoji. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1I sent you a heart emoji this morning, so we're good.
Speaker 5Yeah, I saw that, I got all excited.
Speaker 1All right, wes. So we were just out walking some cotton out there at the pivot that needed a little water and keith asked us, said hey, do you want some water on this cotton? Go out there and look at it. We're walking around. We got moisture, obviously. Right, it's been raining pretty regular. There's a couple open bowls out there, first position, you know, in the bottom of the plant, and it's blooming out the top. You know. I told him, I made the call, I said we done.
Speaker 4John snyder says stop and the words of david hall pull the meter, pull the meter be done, yeah, and we say that um, you may or may not be in that scenario. You may or may or may not have caught and missed some of the rain that we've gotten. As you said that, I leaned back and looked out the window. It's kind of dark. To the west, to the east, sun might come out, it might not, we don't know. So the the critical thing at that point when's the last time you irrigated that field, do you know?
Speaker 2it's been a while you know that we I think it's wet. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1Well, I mean there's a wet side to the field, but then we went over to the conservation side and I scratched around and I mean there's moisture up to the top.
Speaker 4Yeah, you're good. I think you're good, right, that's where we're at. You got you probably are at 10 open if you got a few bowls open on the bottom it'd be one or two on a plant.
Speaker 1So I mean you're getting close. I mean by next week we'll be 10 for sure.
Speaker 4So I sent out an article to our agents this week. Hopefully if, if you guys are listening, they shared that to you too, included John and his current grad student on his co-authors Appreciate their contributions to that. That was on. We talked about it at the East Georgia Cotton Conference too. Irrigation termination we're knocking on the door. When I walked in, john said he felt like most of the cotton was somewhere between You've seen cotton between peak bloom and cutout, and that means we need to be tracking our fields and seeing where we're at.
Speaker 4I made the statement in the article if you're at cutout, we're not at the point to say turn the water off. But you better be thinking about it very hard right now. You better be thinking about what the moisture looks like, thinking about what the future cast looks like like. Thinking about what the future cast looks like, um, I will say I think after today tell me if I'm wrong but after today we've got a few days that it's not supposed to rain. But then I think later next week there's a chance, but again later next week don't matter right now in the forecast. I hate to say that.
Speaker 1so you know, if you're tomorrow's forecast to change, today again it will, and so much so if you're in a field, I say all that say.
Speaker 4If you're Tomorrow's forecast to change, today again, it will, so much so if you're in a field, I say all that Say. If you're in a field that's been dry or you're drying down and you've missed some of those rains, you've had to irrigate more often than we have here. We have a field with sensors over here off Carpenter that we have not irrigated at all this year. Every time we got close it rained.
Speaker 4Where at on carpenter, oh, over at the data farm, I gotta center on carpenter road too, yeah, and I've watered it, but yours, so ours, was a little bit, I think, later planted and a little bit of okay, yeah, we're, yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 4So we've just called it just right at that one. Every time we got close to um to irrigating it, that one hit threshold and never turned it on, and one of the two fields out there. So it's kind of crazy how that works. That's a great, I hate to say it, but that's a great year to walk through, that we didn't need irrigation, that we invested in something that said we didn't need it. And now we're at the end of the year and we're there's bowls opening in that field and I said let's walk away from it. The same decision you made. So, um, you know the quickest way to pay for a pivot is to not use it, not have to use it. It is, and I hate to say that because it's like you've got an investment that's sitting there in the in the field, but guess what, you've not ran money through it that year and you've put that back in your pocket.
Speaker 1So well, and on a year like this one, where cotton's selling for 67 68 cents, that ain't a bad deal.
Speaker 4I will say from john's study last year, the data I looked at. I ran some economic numbers on it. It was not as big of a deal you didn't need. You only needed one like half inch irrigation, if I think. It was four tenths to be exact. It came up to three to six dollars per acre. Is what he spent for that additional irrigation beyond cut out because he's doing on that when he's terminating it, cut out an open bowl and three dollars an acre is still money, I mean oh yeah, it's still money a year like this year the previous year and this study's published.
Speaker 4You anybody can go pull the data and run numbers, like I did on it, but I ranged anywhere from, if I remember right, like $20 per acre, all the way up to $80 per acre that were spent to irrigate that trial beyond cutout with no return. And so that's where it gets significant. We get antsy and guys will tell you that they will irrigate much beyond open bowl because they are real scared about it and data are continually showing. Don't do it, don't do it, don't do it. So again we're moving into that part of the year that we have to strongly scout our fields, consider where they're at again, check the moisture I think we've all said this and make smart decisions. I mean, I think it's as simple as that and I don't want to see money wasted or thrown out thrown out the window that we're not going to get returns on. Yeah, I mean we're not in a hot, dry fall right now. That could change.
Speaker 4But that cotton crop, if it's sitting there right now, actually moving into in the hot and dry, it's going to help you out from defoliation and I think it's going to let it finish out the way it needs to. That's what you'll want and it's going to help you out from the bull rot and the disease perspective too. So we really it'd be nice to move into a little bit drier. I don't know. We've got pretty active tropics starting to kick up and I think that's what's been causing this rain the past few days Some tropical systems in the Gulf and on the Atlantic pushing moisture through. I don't think we're of any concern of the hurricane that's sitting out or fixed to be a hurricane in the Atlantic. It's supposed to go north of us but it still could spin a little bit of moisture off in east georgia as it passes by the coast and push stuff in but if it goes and pulls everything that we got over us right now, I'd be right, that's it.
Speaker 4It dries out a little bit and let us finish out. That's what we really need. Is that that condition? So we say all that to say if you're, if you're progressed along with the cotton crop, it probably is getting time to walk away from the irrigation. If you hadn't already made that decision so you might have later planted cotton that you need to keep watching, you might be in some dry pockets across the state that have not caught the rainfall that other of us have, that you need to irrigate. But I think a majority, we can make almost a blanket statement this year we've caught rain in the past three weeks across most of the state, yeah, and so that's helped us to finish this crop off the way we wanted yeah, for sure, because it was getting in a situation where we needed one bad yeah, it was, we were.
Speaker 4If you had a, I can't remember if I was on the. I don't think I missed. I was on the one two weeks ago. I was nowhere. I don't even know it was just dr roberts and sarah I think I talked about bugs, probably at plant foods, where I was at, probably, but at that point we had just gotten over that hump, we were getting nervous. It was like man, it's hot, it had just started raining. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I segued into you, bob, dr Kim.
Bull Rot Challenges in Wet Weather
Speaker 1Wright's favorite. I mean just favorite. I had to bring it up at the field Earlier today. The field earlier today we were at the plains field day over there at the southwest research and education center and I started talking about these overcast days and you know, a little bit of rain here and there and it just, it just lends itself into dot kim wright's favorite disease of cotton bull ride, bull ride. Yeah nemesis.
Speaker 5My nemesis because you know you go to these meetings and cotton growers will listen politely when you talk about everything. But what they really want me to tell them is how to solve the bull rot problem. And, as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, there really is no, no good solution for it. Why not? You know, everybody's got great ideas. Can't we flood the? Uh? Can't we chemigate? Can't we flood? Can't we do these things? Can't we drop nozzles down? And it all makes sense.
Speaker 5But so far, colleagues elsewhere, we've just not been able to. It's just difficult to get around that three-dimensional bowl, get enough fungicide around that bowl to protect it over the length of period we do. And then you compound that with because any kind of insect puncture, any kind of feeding like that could introduce pathogens as well. So it has been. Uh is what everybody wants, the, the. The only way that we can uh to solve a bull rot problem is to have help from mother nature and that is to have the kind of weather that we're not having right now. Right because, uh, you know, I get pictures from consultants and agents every day and and within the past three days, never bull rot. Uh, it's gone up and it's, it's it's starting to peg, yeah, it's like, yeah, I know, I'm aware, so, yeah, so it is a problem, obviously.
Speaker 5Um, and some of the most that. What makes it even more important, some of the most valuable cotton bowls are the ones that are. You know, we're not, we're not losing the bull rot, the ones we really don't care about. We're losing the most valuable, yeah, cotton bowls. So it is. It is frustrating they. What we can do is if in in Phillip, in your wheelhouse, is if we can manage stink bugs, if we can manage anything that might increase the risk for bull rot, incidentally with introducing pathogens, so, but it's just a very difficult situation.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know, looking at the money tree, you know everybody talks about the money bowls and stuff like that and whenever Jared was still here he did the money tree and it was on 1646. But it still relates that 91 of your crop is below node 15, you know. And so whenever you see something like bull rot, come in and that's 91 of your crop down there. It gives you a little heartburn.
Speaker 4Well, it's back to what you said earlier the last year in midville. What you're talking about and your, your management strategy has to change at that point, right, you've lost that bottom third or more of the crop. Then you got to refocus on what your management strategy is that we're sat, what you're trying to finish, what you're trying to do, because it's a bad scenario to be in. You already know there's lost yield potential, so how do we survive that in that case?
Speaker 1yeah, yeah, that's right, and so we were even talking. I come up with some harebrained idea to try to look at something. But it's like just looking at first fruit and branch of some of these varieties and planting date and seeing if there's something to that where we can adjust almost variety selection based on the tendency of that variety. And if we're going to plant early, right, because it seems like to me historically on later planted cotton, it's not as big of an issue. But that's because it kind of pushes itself into September as opposed to sitting in August where we are right now, where it would be during that period of susceptibility. But of course, if you plant cotton in June, you got some other issues that you might have to deal with.
Speaker 1Dr Kim, right, you know one other thing that you touched on. You pulled a leaf over there in Plains today and textbook you know textbook stuff and we talk about how cotton, you know, nobody really wants to put a bunch of money in this crop and so whenever you hold a leaf up there and you say target spot right, and say hey, we're going to have to spray something that is expensive, you know what's kind of the thought around that right now.
Speaker 5Yeah, and coupled with that, our friend Eddie Beasley with Bear Crop Science, he just sent me three pictures just a second of areola at Bildu.
Speaker 5So it's not just Target but it's Target spot, but also, even more so, areola at Bildu, yeah, yeah, and that goes from whether you're in Bullock county or screvin county or in taro county or in grady county, it's all, it's that disease is everywhere and what what we can tell you is is that, based upon the research has been done uh areola mildew into a large target spot as well is that the yield we're protecting?
Speaker 5In georgia there's been bigger figures out of auburn, some others, but for us it's somewhere between 100 and 200 pounds of lint and with areola at mildew we feel very confident with a single fungicide application with products like Preaxor, miravis, top or Revitec. We feel very comfortable that that single application is all you need to protect that amount of yield. So it comes down to the grower. What is the value? Let's say that you can expect 150 pounds of uh lent. What's the value of that lent versus what it would cost you for the fungicide application? And the fungicide application is priced somewhere around 20 dollars when you factor everything into it yeah, and you look at 68 cents at 150 pounds, that's 100.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you look at 68 cents at 150 pounds, that's $100. So you know, and what's the optimum time, in terms of aerial, late mildew or target spot, I guess, to make those applications? Is it too late?
Speaker 5It's not so with aerial mildew. It's not too late until you are within a month of anticipated defoliation, or it's not too late until you've already started seeing significant defoliation from the crop. So the best thing about aerial mill do is you are watching your crop or you're listening to your county agents or, uh, for instance, with this I'm not sure which county this came from, but this would be now, with this weather, this would be a good opportunity, uh, to spray a single application, and so that would be, as is, looking where you are and if and where the disease is with target spot is about the same thing. It really to maximize is to have somebody out there scouting for you. If you're not seeing it, don't spray it. If you're starting to see it, then you do spray it. Yeah, so that would be, and there's some who do, who've been bitten and they're gonna spray, no matter what. They're going to spray the fifth or sixth week of bloom for aerial mildew and they're just going to say that's going to make me money.
Speaker 5I think a better way to do it, if you can possibly do it, is have somebody watching and you paying attention to where the disease is. As I mentioned at the field day today. We don't have to convince anybody the need for irrigation. We don't have to convince anybody need for insect control or weed control or to plant a good variety. But when it comes to something that I'm used to doing and don't have to do all the time with diseases, the most important thing is to consider a if I can make 150 pounds of lint and spend 20 doing it, do I want to do that? If you say, well, I don't want to bother, then don't worry about it yeah, but if you want to do it and the thing is is to work to find out what the timing would be- that's the Rodney Dangerfield analogy.
Speaker 5That is Right that is, you can't get no respect, no respect, no respect.
Stink Bugs and Plant Bug Management
Speaker 1All right, dr Roberts, it's been a busy couple weeks since you and Sarah sat in this room. Yes, kind of been a whirlwind, what's?
Speaker 2uh, a little bit of a whirlwind and uh, tell you what? Let's start and just talk a little bit about stink bugs. I mean, august is a big month for stink bugs. Yeah, stink bugs. We sprayed some today. Yep, number one pest in georgia. George cotton has been for several years.
Speaker 2Our growers are know what to do with stink bugs. Encourage folks to scout, use thresholds and trust your scouting, trust your scouting. I was going to tell that story. Yeah, we actually were on a conversation on the way back from field day today and a consultant called me and his stink bug damage counts were unusually low. It was a field of cotton next to corn which was drying down. A lot of times we see stink bugs move out of the corn, but his counts were really low.
Speaker 2Trust your scouting, trust your scouting. If you need to go pull more bowls to convince yourself so you can trust it, do it. But if you don't need to spray, bob, you don't need to spray. Save that money. And again, thresholds are designed to maximize profitability. Easy peasy, easy peasy, easy peasy. Plant bugs. Where we got them, we got them. We're still fighting them in some localized areas. I really think, as a whole, either, our growers are doing a much better job or they're not as bad, and I think it may be a combination of both. Don't drop your guard. You got to stay on these things and I don't know what to say. There's a lot of chatter about it, but where we have a problem, there's a problem. Yeah, there are a lot of places in the state of georgia we do not have a problem you know, it's been, it's been talked about.
Speaker 1I mean, we say it I feel like every time on this podcast yeah, let's talk about plant bugs, just because last year was so bad. Yep, you know, even thinking about today, we were over there looking at the variety trial and it's, you know, it's pretty obvious to me that that they got us in some certain spots. It's tough to know. You can't put a post-mortem on a plant bug, no, but when you're missing four or five first positions and even some seconds and thirds, I mean something happened there. Well, we were losing a little too much. Yeah, that's right, and those bowls were old enough that they should have been old enough that they would not shed.
Speaker 2They did not shed, did not overcast whatever. We lost them prior to bloom. Yeah, most likely plant bugs. And again, our goal is not to eliminate that camp. I had a mentor tell me one time. He said uh, you know, at the end of the year, when you're kind of assessing your crop, if you see a little bit of damage, that's okay. If you see no damage, you may have sprayed too much. Yeah, if you see a lot of damage, you didn't spray enough. You didn't spray enough. But but again, that's just back to these thresholds. They're designed to maximize profitability and uh, but anyhow, that's pretty much what's going on there.
Speaker 2We got spider mites I mean, spider mites is part of doing business on plant bugs and stink bugs and you got to take a pill there White flies just touching them. Briefly, numbers have definitely ticked up over the last few weeks. You know this rainfall we've gotten has really bought us some time. There's still a handful of fields that have been sprayed in the state of Georgia, but if we get in another dry period it's going to happen real fast again. And again, that's probably just in these areas right here where we deal with them, you know, on a more frequent basis. But you know that's a good thing with these rainfalls and the cooler temperatures. The cooler temperatures really slow their development down. I mean, the hotter it is, the faster they reproduce.
Speaker 1There we go. Let's keep it PG please. That's kind of where we are. Yeah, you know, talking about whiteflies, I was on the phone with bill over in bullock and he said he was seeing some singles yes, adults. I mean, you know we started picking up singles, golly, it may have been the first part of july at least maybe the end of june and but is it, you know?
Speaker 2you know, in areas, um, really, as we get away, I think the geographic spread of the presence of a whitefly has grown. Yeah, like it's not uncommon. We were I don't know if you noticed when we were looking at the cotton today and, yeah, there were some singles over there. There were some single whiteflies in Plains and you know it's not uncommon for us to see that. Yeah, but again, what's today, august something, 18th, if we're just picking up a single here and there, 13. We're probably good to go. Yeah, and I mean we don't want to do something crazy. Yeah, I know, unless we have to.
Speaker 1Well, and we don't want to break the system. Hey, if you listen to last week if you listen to two weeks ago, whatever two weeks ago, yeah, so, uh, yeah, you don't want to break the system because then you put yourself in a bad spot.
Speaker 2But I mean seeing saying, of course, the threshold is based on immatures yep and basically we try to time our treatments there when reproduction begins in the field. And uh, you know we have thresholds on that. If we have 50 of the leaves infested, you know it's time to go. Be timely with that spray. I mean, when it's time to make an application, you need to be timely. Seven days can matter and uh, yes, it can. Dr han lived it and uh that's not fun.
Speaker 2Not being on time is going to cost you more money and you're probably not going to be as effective.
Speaker 1Yep, we went and this was golly. It may have been my second year. Was it your first or second year? It was first or second year. And Dr Roberts told me said you need to put an application out here. I said okay, it was about eight days later we finally got around to it.
Speaker 2Then I got on the sprayer and I'm driving through it and it's like a fog coming out the end of the field and I'm just like, oh god, missed the boat there and that happens. And then it happens, but, uh, but again, we don't need to be overly aggressive, but with white flies, uh, do need to be time. We need to be timely with everything. There's so much we do in agriculture and I don't care if it's herbicide or fungicide, fertility planning. You know, timeliness, just such a it gives such a return. Yeah and uh, it's just so hard to be timely, yeah whenever it's well, whenever it rains, every day, every day.
Speaker 1You know, it's hard to be timely, so all right, dr roberts. Well, let's talk about the buzz a little bit all right.
Cotton Jacet: New Pest in Georgia
Speaker 2Well, let's talk about this. Uh, something we're referring to is the cotton jacet. Yeah all right.
Speaker 2So just not just on cotton by the way, not just on cotton, um, you know, we've seen it on sunflowers, okra, um, eggplant and cotton. Just brief history. This is an insect that was first found in Puerto Rico in 2023. It was found in South Florida primarily in 2024. We now have it in 40 plus counties in the state of Georgia. Confirmed, confirmed. It's probably in every county in the coastal plain, in my opinion, but it's a very tiny leafhopper.
Speaker 1Very tiny. Yeah, I mean we've been looking for it all summer really, and it's like until dr roberts walked into the gin and said all right, here it is. I didn't know how small the thing was, I mean it, I mean they're about the size of a white fly, maybe a little bigger than a white fly a little bigger than an adult white fly, yeah, but they're tiny.
Speaker 2They're tiny, but they're sucking insects. They're sucking insects and when they feed they actually inject toxin to help break down some cells or whatever. But or whatever, yeah, but we see something that we're referring referring to as hopper burn some, some yellowing on the outside of the margins of the leaves that can turn a reddish color, even even become necrotic. We also tend to see some leaves that tend to pucker up for some reason, a little crinkling. Again, it's found in a lot of areas. We ain't got nothing to hide here, camp, there are some fields that have been treated. Yep, that's right. But one thing I'll say is we don't need to overreact on this pest. I told you it's in 40-something counties. We had a lot of county agents went out to find it and they did. Maybe it was on okra, maybe it was on cotton, but this insect really tends to infest edges of fields.
Speaker 2First, pivot tracks. Pivot tracks, just wheel tracks across the field, sprayer tracks. We were in the field the other day where they were spraying on the angle across the roads and I mean you could follow the damage down the wheel tracks from the sprayer. But you need to you know, be able to recognize this injury and be honest with you camp. The initial signs of injury almost looks nutritional yeah and that's what's so.
Speaker 1that's, I mean it's aggravating. I mean mean I'd just be straight, you can look at it and you say, oh, that's got potash. If you don't get out the truck and you go look at it, you're going to think it's fertility. Or if you're in the cab of the tractor driving over a field, you're going to say, man, this part of the field it ain't supposed to run out of here, that's right.
Speaker 2So anyway, but anyway, if you see that, especially on the ends, just get out and take a look. What you'll need to do is flip leaves over in the top of the plant. We actually believe the most common place to find little immatures, as well as the adults, is on about the fourth leaf, so one above the leaf where we look for whiteflies. You can find them on the fifth leaf too. But if you have that symptom of yellowing or hopper burn or you know it's gonna be on the ends first, but flip that leaf over and, uh, look for these little insects, the adults.
Speaker 1I mean, they're tiny but they have two black dots on their wings hey if you can't see the black dots take a picture take a picture of them with your phone and then you you can zoom in.
Speaker 2That's what I do. I mean, that's what I do even with my reading glasses. I need my reading glasses when I zoom in with the phone. But you know, confirm, that's what it is. There are a lot of lookalikes out there, but to my knowledge there are no other lookalikes that will cause this type injury.
Speaker 2One of the things I would say about this you know we first found this insect just a little over a month ago in the state of Georgia and you know we're trying to do the best we can to learn about it. Yeah, Again, it's found in other states. So colleagues in other states are looking at this insect, but it's an evolving situation. We are keeping the county agents updated as we gain new information, and that information may be coming from clemson or auburn or florida or us. Yeah, we're working together as a team and we want to get the most timely information, and the way we're going to do that's through county delivery. It's worked for a long time. So if you have these things and you're concerned about needing to spray or wanting to spray, hey, get up with your county agent. Yeah, They'll give you the most current information we got in determining a threshold or what products to use.
Speaker 1So that would be the best route. They've been trained up on symptoms and thresholds, that know all very preliminary stuff. But you know, and I think that's important to bring up in terms of you know, not breaking the system right. We don't want to overreact and then cause other problems, but but where you got a problem, where it's a problem we have to.
Speaker 2We need to fix this problem. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2And it can change pretty quickly. And I say it can change pretty quickly and if we have a problem we need to fix it. You don't want to treat a field based on what's happening on the first five feet on the end of the field. Yeah, you're going to need to get out there 30 or 40 feet, but once you see what's happening on the first five feet, you're going to know you're not going to want the whole field to look like that. Yeah. So again, scouts be scouting. You know, if you see these things, especially when you go into the field, get up at the county agent. They can come visit with you and, uh, we'll just go from there.
Speaker 2But again, I don't really want to talk about the threshold today because it may change tomorrow. Yeah right, we've got a lot of trials going out with colleagues here in Georgia. We're doing on-farm stuff. We don't have many on the station, for example, on any of the stations. So we're working with some great cooperating growers working with our county agents trying to generate information. So hopefully we're going to have some options to look at. But it's something new.
Speaker 1Which has its own challenges, has its own challenges, but the good thing is that you know the agents are out there looking for them. They know what to look for. We know that it can be managed if we get in a situation, yes, right, and so those are good things that we know right out the gate. Of course, it's going to take some time to figure out the rest of it.
Speaker 2Yep, we've got to start somewhere. Again, we read a lot of papers and articles out of India, john Dr Schneider. That's where the insect is native. That's where it's native on the Indian subcontinent and the latitude north-south there in India is very comparable to where we are. So you know how much that environment's different than Georgia. I'm sure it is. But you know we've got to work out a lot of things. But County Edge can help you there.
Speaker 1Yeah, just key is getting out there and looking. I mean, even today, having a conversation with a grower of driving a sprayer through the field and thinking it's white flies, you know. Yeah, I mean it's just important to look, yep, and know what you're dealing with in the field. And so, like Dr Roberts said, of course that is an evolving situation and county agents are in the loop.
Speaker 2We need to be out there looking. I mean, you know something new. We need to be looking. Yep, we don't need to be overreacting, nope, nope.
Speaker 1And it's like I told somebody yesterday who's got a lot of experience. I told him I said, once you've got a problem, you'll know it. You know what I mean. Yes, it's pretty obvious. Yes, and it's pretty obvious, yes, once you see some cotton that don't look like cotton it's supposed to look.
Speaker 5I remember all the hours and hours you're on the road with the kudzu bug back in the day, and so it just shows that the research needs to be done, but in the end it may prove to be either quite straightforward to control or may not need to be controlled.
Speaker 2That's right. Well, so talk to the field day today. You know, and this is kind of how we approach kudzu bug. These numbers, bob, can be pretty high. And you know, as an extension entomologist, first thing we need to do is know how to kill it. You know. Know what insecticides are effective. We're getting there, we're still on that step. Second goal does it matter? So we're trying to do trials, treated and untreated strips, just to see if it matters. Third goal hey, let's try to really dial in a threshold and maximize profits. When does it matter? Yeah, when does it matter? And then you know, on down the road, even with kudzu bugs, you know, we did those three things and we started exploring planting dates and we learned about planting dates how that in fact patted kudzu bug. You know, and it does, but it takes time.
Speaker 1Hey, for those that don't know, the first ever trial on kudzu bugs in this hemisphere On soybeans On soybeans Was done by Dr Roberts, bostwick, georgia, in Bostwick Georgia, right by the gin Right by the gin that's right, right next door to the gin that go in here. All right. Right by the gin, yes, right by the gin. For those who didn't know that yeah, if you didn't know, all right.
Speaker 2Hey, what about you?
Speaker 1Dr Hand We've been talking a lot. My calls have kind of revolved around what we started on with the fruit shed and stuff like that, and so it's, you know we're getting. Hey, here's something we need to talk about. It's going down on Monday.
Speaker 2I think so. Yep, dr Hand will be talking about defoliation soon. Yeah, so we so, dr.
Speaker 1Hand will be talking about defoliation soon. So Dr Roberts asked me to go check a field plant date study of his and I texted him I guess it was on Monday and I said next week. And so next week is going down, he's going to knock the leaves off some. So we're going to start talking recipes here before too long and getting ready for all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2That cotton was planted in march, yeah, march yeah, don't get too jacked up everybody but I but I tell you what, some of that mid-april cotton, I think we're it ain't far. I think we're going to be putting some tofoli out tofolian and out on some april cotton in august. You think so? I really do, man. Just looking at someone, I've been on farm a little bit in the last more the last couple weeks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have, um, there's, there's some april cotton that. And I talked to a grower, uh, the other day I said you think you'll defoliate this in august. And he says, uh, planning on it ain't no doubt that's pretty much what he said.
Speaker 1Just tell me where to start. Yep, that's right. You know, defoliation is always a fun time, but uh, once you start, there ain't no going back. You know what I'm saying you, you get started and there ain't no going back. You, you got to start picking the stuff and so it is uh certainly that time to start getting ducks in a row and things like that, especially on some of our earlier planted cotton. But of course I I want to give a plug. We already talked.
Speaker 1We were at the at the field day over there in plains today. Good turnout, uh, always enjoy doing field days. But here on uh september the third, we're doing one in tifton, cotton and peanut research day, and uh, just a good opportunity. Uh, you know those are your checkoff dollars at work, you know. So if you're interested in kind of seeing what those dollars are getting invested in, come and see us on the experiment station.
Speaker 1We got a lot of stuff, a lot of good stuff that we're going to show and talk about, and you know we're getting an agenda together, so be on the lookout from that. As always, if you got any questions, just reach out to your county agent. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Talking Cotton with the UGA Cotton Team. If you have any questions about anything we talked about today or if there's anything you'd like for us to talk about in the future, please contact your local UGA County Extension agent and, as always, you can find us on all major podcast platforms. Be sure to like, share with your friends and subscribe so you can stay up to date.
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