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
Cotton Stays Profitable When We Stay On Time
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Cotton can look “fine” from the road and still be one storm, one missed spray window, or one miscalibrated spreader away from losing yield. We break down the early July Georgia cotton picture, including the latest acreage numbers, where the crop sits on squaring and bloom, and why that stretch of heavy rain after drought created two problems at once: delayed fieldwork and nutrients that may have moved before plants could use them. If you are seeing yellow cotton, we talk through what might be happening and how to think about recovery without guessing.
From there we get practical about irrigation scheduling as cotton water use ramps up during squaring and bloom. We share what monitoring wells and sensor data suggest about drought risk returning fast, plus how isolated summer storms can make your neighbor’s situation totally different from yours. One of the most important takeaways is learning to separate heat stress from true moisture stress, since mid-afternoon wilting can happen even with adequate soil moisture, and adding water at the wrong time can hurt yield.
We also dig into fertility and equipment: dry spreader width issues, liquid nozzle variation, clogged screens, and why quick calibration checks can prevent streaking and under-application when every pound of nitrogen counts. We close with longer-term field stewardship and pest management, including why fallow fields can create erosion and weed seed bank headaches, how low-cost summer cover crops can help, and the latest integrated pest management updates on aphid fungus, rising plant bug pressure in key areas, and what “jassid detection” really means in Georgia right now. Subscribe, share this with a cotton grower or consultant, and leave a review so more folks can find timely, research-backed cotton production advice.
Welcome And Georgia Crop Snapshot
SPEAKER_03Bringing 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.
SPEAKER_04All right. Today's July 8th. Talking Cotton Podcast. Got a good crew today. Wes. How's it going? Taylor Singleton. Good morning. And on the board is Miss Sarah Hobby. Good morning.
SPEAKER_00Good morning.
SPEAKER_04Alright, uh, just to kind of to get us started, uh Camp is at the National Association of County Agriculture Agents meeting. He's on the way out there. So we have a few agents out there representing the good state of Georgia. Uh USDA did put out an acreage report uh the end of June, and cotton acres planted in the state of Georgia, they they've got us at a million acres. So that's up about 165,000 acres from 2025. So million acres of cotton. I thought we'd get there and we're close. We you know may get a little more, but I think most folks are about wound up planting. But if you look at the U.S. as a whole, 9.85 million acres are planted, so that's up about 6%. And uh in Georgia, our acres were up about 19%. So that's good. And uh in terms of the crop progress report for the week ending July 5th, uh, we're about 63% of our crop is squaring, which is real close to the five-year average, which is 66%. Also, about 14% of our crop is setting bowls or blooming. Again, our five-year average is 16%. So we're tracking pretty normal to the past few years. As far as the condition of the crop, uh 91% fair or better. So we got uh 53% good, 7% excellent, 31% fair. And uh then some very poor and poor, but that's all right. So, you know, as I've drawn around the the drove around, the the crop looks pretty good to me. I mean, we've struggled with some of the weather. It was hot, then it's dry, but uh farmers are getting fields cleaned up, getting some fertilizer out. I think we're heading in the right direction. Uh what are what are y'all seeing on the crop, y'all? I think we look pretty good.
SPEAKER_02I'm happy to hear those numbers. I felt like we were riding around and and looking at some of our trials. I feel like we were running a little behind, but it's that those numbers do not represent that. So sometimes that's just a perception. Saw a little bit of yellow tint out there. I think that had to do with what you said as we planted, uh it rained pretty heavily for about two to three weeks in the middle of July. Now, to what you just said, we're able to get caught up and get fertilizer back out finally. I think that's all that was was just we couldn't get back in the fields for about three years.
SPEAKER_04There's definitely some yellow cotton. And uh, I mean you can tell where people have come in and side dressed and we've greened it up. But uh, I mean, we have some trials here on the station. I mean, they're yellow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And uh even some of the Kent's students' trials, uh Marshall Corkin, he's got some looking at nitrogen timing, and you know, I I think we lost some of that nitrogen we put out pre-plant just with all that rain.
SPEAKER_02Well, when you look, and and I will I can't ever remember all the numbers because we look at too many, but I've got two of my grad students writing up a blog post for next week's for where we stand, and they did a good job. They looked at we got sensors out at uh we got a lot of sensors out, but the ones they focused on were in Camilla. Jay put some in Perry on somebody's trial, and we got some in Midville, so it kind of gives you a little triangle in there. And they looked at planting dates and then rainfall within certain amounts of time, and it was amazing to look that they're like they said, Well, we've got like seven inches of rain on this particular trial, but all that came within a week and a half. You see, so I think that's what got, you know, we were very dry, and then all of a sudden it was like lots of rain, and we can't complain about rain, right? Don't get me wrong, but but it's like we finally refilled some profiles and got rain. But I think to your point, Philip, that's what got us. A lot of rain came very fast in a two-week time period, and I would not doubt exactly what you just said. We probably uh lost a little bit of pre-plant, so we just got to do some good recovery now and be a good do good with our side dress.
SPEAKER_04It g it got us behind on weed management. I mean, it got us behind on a lot of things.
SPEAKER_01I've heard that that a lot from growers that I I mean in my own trials, we got behind just because of the rain.
SPEAKER_02They, you know, the biggest complaint I heard was that is that, you know, I've two things. It was kind of funny. One is weed control because they were we were also trying to finish planting, right? If we go back and look, you got a little bit of that crop that was stretched into early June when it started raining. And so you had to make a decision. If you were talk to a couple different farmers who are um don't have a plethora of help, we'll put it that way, right? Or equipment. And so it's like, what do you prioritize at that point when you can finally get back in the field, finish planting, or go spray for weeds? I know what I would have done. I'd have finished the planting. That's right. And so then you got to turn back around and play the catch-up game on weed control and do what you gotta do. So, yeah, it is what it is.
SPEAKER_04Well, it just demonstrates the point of how important being timely is. We know that. It really doesn't matter if we're talking about weed management, insect management, irrigation, planting. Oh, love it. Timeliness is so important, but again, there's only so much time in the day, and there's only so many days where you can work.
SPEAKER_02But uh I think the main thing here is we're off to a decent start. I think we are. Acreage is up. I'm glad to hear that too from last year. You know, we thought it would go that way, and we had some other factors that pushed it up to there, and that's a good thing. Yep.
Irrigation Planning As Demand Ramps
SPEAKER_04Well, anyway, what about uh on the irrigation front or or whatever you want to talk about, Dr. Porter?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well you you hit it on it with our crop condition right there, and and it'll come out uh some harder and a little bit harder numbers beyond just listening to me in our blog post, hopefully on Monday or either Friday this week, one of the two when I can get it wrapped up and edited and ready to roll. But um we're in a majority of our crop is squaring or moving into bloom, as Dr. Roberts just said. And so what that means is if we go look at our water use curve and where we're at, and uh everybody I can't say everybody, but a majority of you guys listen to this know cotton very well. You know, when we get into that point, when it starts squaring, our water requirements start to ramp up relatively significantly. Okay, we're putting on. We're putting on, we need it, right? Oh yeah. You're putting on. So what uh what's gonna happen is for good or bad, we were in a very bad drought. We got a lot of rainfall that that I'm gonna say right now temporarily refilled our profile. And the reason I say temporarily, and you can't base everything off uh this one indicator um that I'm about to give you, but um, you know, if you're in the Southwest District, specifically in that Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District, there's uh 15 monitoring wells out there, and I don't know how many active permits there are, try to keep up with it, very few that operate off of this, but they if those wells drop below the 2012 drought average, condition goes to red. We were in red from last October all the way until late May, we went to yellow, and you know what happened two days ago? Back to red. So even though we got that rainfall, we're hitting back in the cusp of that uh drought again. And I, you know, the weather is the hardest thing to predict, and and I'm gonna go a little deeper into it because this is where we need to plan going into July and where we sit right now. So um, when when we talked earlier on the podcast and all the long-term stuff I'd read about a month ago, and I didn't read my the report on Monday on where it sat, I didn't had a chance, need to go back and do that, but they predicted at that time for July to go back hot and dry. Well, guess what we've done right now? At least right now we're back hot and dry. And we're moving into peak water use, and we've depleted or are depleting our deeper moisture. So I want to I want to go into that. The nice thing, the way this season came out, I think, for the most part, we had a relatively dry spring, and to me that's very important because compared to a wet spring, in a wet spring, and our crop sits there in moisture, it does not put down deep roots, it sits in a saturated condition, have other issues. Most of that heavy rainfall we had came hard, it came fast, it came after a lot of our cotton was planted. I feel like we didn't sit in a saturated condition. Thus, we have the opportunity now as we move in to utilize deeper moisture for a little while to help us supplement. But we're going to see that back to the point of those the monitoring in those wells. We're seeing that uh subsoil moisture disappear again because I I've watched the radar. I don't know about some of y'all's trials. Apparently we got a pretty, and I need to check how much we got a pretty significant rainfall rainfall in Camilla last night because all my sensors dropped down to not saturated, but they all recovered, even my dry land ones. They were getting very bad and they looked really good this morning. So we're getting sporadic rain. We didn't um we got some in Tifton two days ago now. Pretty heavy. It was sporadic though. So it depends on where you're at. You may or may not have caught those. So if you have not caught those, we are needing irrigation. We are using deep moisture, we are moving it from square and into bloom. Now is going to be the time that it's hardest for you to try to keep up or stay caught up because it dries that deeper moisture out faster than we can replenish it with irrigation. So there it's twofold in there though. We've done a lot of we've done a lot of research, got a student working on it right now where she looks, we're looking at letting it dry out a little bit more during bloom or during this time of year versus keeping it adequate versus over-irrigating it just in these time periods to see what that does to the crop growth, the yield, and all. And actually, surprisingly, during 2025, where we let it dry some, basically saying, hey, we couldn't quite keep up. Our yields were just as good. So I'm telling you not to panic, but at the same time, don't let yourself fall behind because if we go into a dry cycle that carries us all the way into August, we're going to do a really good job supplementing that irrigation as we move forward going into the season. So I think what we need it. I don't the long term does not have any what I would say significant rainfall, unless y'all have seen any different. I feel like it's hot and dry throughout the weekend.
SPEAKER_01They have I think there's a little chance on Sunday.
SPEAKER_02That's right. They changed a 70% chance on Monday, 50% Monday. We'll see.
SPEAKER_04It's summertime in Georgia. Storms will pop, potentially. It's going to rain somewhere most days. So it's just like the rain in Tifton, and it's just amazing how isolated. But uh at the RDC pivot, 4500. At the microgen, 0.04. That that's a not even a microgen. You can see it. You can see one to the other. Well, we we were out yesterday down in Colka County, and we watched a wall of rain. We were doing something, and you know, we heard the rain, we saw the rain, we ran to the truck. And never felt the rain. Never felt the rain.
SPEAKER_02And we left, and we can still see the rain. That rain you're talking about in Tipton on T Monday, I I promise you, in the center of town, it rained well over an inch, if not more. Because I I believe it. It was it was dark. But the same as what you said, our weather station right up here on Carpenter Road, 400s.
SPEAKER_01So And it didn't nothing at in Tai Thai.
SPEAKER_02Really? Zero. Yeah. So you know, you just need to stay on top of it. Know you're moving into that period. Don't don't get laxed right now. Let's not let's not stress the crop. We know we don't want to look for visible um moisture stress, heat stress is a different story. Um I could say, Philip, if we want to talk about it for a minute or two. So the difference in heat stress and moisture stress is once that crop, and we need a physiologist here to give you the exact temperatures, but once that crop, once the air temperature gets over a certain degree level, I think it's around 95, and our humidity is extremely high, that crop cannot transpire the way it's supposed to, right? It can't move moisture through, is putting into a heat stress scenario. You might have adequate moisture in your field. So you can see wilting during that time. Usually that's going to occur sometime between noon and two or three in the afternoon until about six or seven o'clock at night. All of us have seen it in cotton fields. You drive by in that, you know, mid-afternoon time, they look kind of wilted and rough, but you can if you cut out and check the field, there's adequate moisture there. You come back early in the morning, that crop looks beautiful again, it's good to go, it's had cooler temperatures. Right? There's stress occurring to it, but there's very little we can do. The last thing we want to do in that case, especially if we have adequate moisture near saturated conditions, is add more moisture because we will reduce our yields. We'll put another stress on top of it. So make sure you're delineating between a heat stress and a moisture stress. Okay, I just I just want to throw that out there. We need to be on top of this. We need to do a good job. Comes back to being timely. That's it. That's it. What else?
Fertilizer Calibration To Prevent Streaks
SPEAKER_02You good? I'd say the only other thing um that I would mention from my world, more the engineering side, is you said it earlier. We're starting to put fertilizer out, been putting fertilizer out. Just make sure you're you're calibrated and you're doing a good job with that. We've uh we've done a few fertilizer spreader calibrations, depending on if you're using dry or liquid that matter. Make sure you calibrate the system. The couple of dry ones that we've done, I appreciate the agents and all the uh work they've done in stepping up with those. I feel like we've solved some major issues with those guys. Spread widths are wrong, um, rates potentially wrong, stuff like that. So we've helped fix some of hopefully some potential streaking that would show up in the fields when they're doing some of those dry applications. Um liquid, to me, it's the same thing, right? Check your nozzles, go across that system, and as dumb as this sounds, I've had issues in the past where you check one nozzle and think you're good, and then if you actually go calibrate, you know, catch on another nozzle, it's not quite the same. I've had orphoss miss stamped, right, in the manufacturing process. I've had potential leaks, those um screens in there, especially nitrogen. If you let it sit in the tank for too long, it'll get that um algae-like film and it'll stop those screens up or reduce flow. Just wash all that stuff, clean that stuff, make sure we're getting out the right rates. You know, back to Phillip's point, we see some yellow cotton out there, potentially lost nitrogen. We don't want to think that we're applying a 30-pound or a 60-pound rate and we're we're half applying somewhere out there and have issues in the field. So that's a simple thing to do before we get out there. Get your your catch cups and um run it, calibrate it, make sure you're comfortable where you're at for what formulation you're using. We do have a uh Lauren Lazaro helped me put together a blog post earlier this season, and it's got a table in there that's got all of our common fertilizer compositions in it, liquid, and compares it back to water. So if you do calibrate that with water, it's got conversion factors that we can step back into, etc. So yeah, so we got all that in there, just extension precision ag and irrigation blog. You can find it, search uh fertilizer in there, application equipment. It's uh it's embedded, or call your agent, your agent knows how to get to that and get me on the phone or Lauren on the phone if we need to and get you through it. I just want us to be good with that stuff.
SPEAKER_04That sounds like a good resource. Good resource.
Fallow Fields And Cheap Summer Covers
SPEAKER_04Uh just a reminder for our listeners we do put out a newsletter once a month, UGAcotton.com. I believe uh that was posted last night. Yep, sure was. And Dr. Singleton, I noticed you had an article in there, it was intriguing to me uh talking about fallow fields. And you know, I has as I've driven around, there are some fields that were not planted.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. Some not as many.
SPEAKER_04There's some dry corners of pivots that were not planted.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_04So uh just touch on that briefly, uh, because I I thought it was interesting.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you. Yeah, sure. So yeah, there's a few fallow fields around this year, but not as many as uh many folks were expecting, which is a good thing. But you know, a fallow field is um, of course, economically a lot of times it's the it's what we gotta do. Um but if you think about what that means for years to come, sometimes that can be problematic to let a field just sit empty throughout an entire growing season, especially when we're dealing with, you know, these big rainfall events and we have a lot of topsoil moving throughout the field. Uh we got heavy weed pressure. If we let those weeds build up over a growing season, they're adding seed back to that soil seed bank that we got to deal with next year. So, you know, as you're thinking about, you know, the economics behind letting that field sit out. Um, the the purpose of the article was just get you thinking about maybe let's put some kind of cheap cover out there just to keep the soil covered, keep that soil in place, keep that soil from washing out so that we got to rebuild that field later, um, suppress any weeds that are gonna come up and prevent that addition back to the soil seed bank. Maybe, you know, limit the amount of products that we got to use next year and the next year and the next year to clean it back up. Um, so there's some pretty cheap summer covers out there. We've been doing uh quite a bit of work on summer covers over the last couple years, just trying to figure out what's cheap, what's economical, what seeding rates, what are our options, how do we manage, things like that. Um, so if that's something that's interesting to you, we've we've got some information of just some stuff you can get out there on that field, how to manage it, but really can we make it work for you economically to minimize the inputs that you're gonna have to invest to clean up and rebuild that field next year? So, you know, I think that economically we can we can pencil it out to make it work for you. It has huge benefits environmentally. Um that's a little bit harder sometimes to make work financially, but I think there's big value to keeping the soil covered. I think it can help us when we cycle back into that field next year or the next with another cash crop. So just something to think about, a little information in the article. And and if you want some more information on species, seeding rates, et cetera, get with your county agent and we can get you that.
SPEAKER_04Yep. I th I thought it was intriguing. And it's just something you don't think about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yep.
SPEAKER_04You know, we're in this for the long haul.
SPEAKER_01That's right. We got to take care of our soil.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01If it washes away, our topsoil washes away, you know, we can drag it back out of the woods, but it's never quite the same. You know, and you got to think about you know what we're losing with that topsoil. You know, are we gonna have to add more fertilizer next year? Are we gonna have to, you know, add more inputs that are gonna cost us more money when things are getting tighter and tighter? You know, can we spend 50 cents an acre this year to put something out there for you know the hot rainy months um, you know, to save us some money next year? It's very personal for every operation, you know, it has to work for you financially, but I think for the long term, uh there's benefits to consider. Of course, I'm always thinking about pesticides, you know. So can we can we minimize the amount of money that we're gonna have to spend on pesticides next year? You know, from a weed management standpoint, I think there's huge benefits. Um, but of course, it it just has to work for you this year. But I I think it's worth exploring if you got one sitting empty.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I thought it was a good read though. It's uh kind of different.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's something different.
SPEAKER_04But but yeah, it's something folks need to think about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, especially if you're starting to slow down a little bit, if you're done planting, you're starting to wrap up your your spray program or getting close to the end, you've got a few extra minutes to just think about it as you're riding around. You know, if you've got a spot to play around with this year, you know, see what happens. I think it would I think it would be very beneficial, but you know, as we're slowing down, something to think about.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Hey, one
Young Scholars And Fire Ant Benefits
SPEAKER_04other thing. Uh you recently uh had a young scholar.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes, yes. So I I did.
SPEAKER_04I think our listeners might be interested in what we do in what we call the young scholars program.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, I I recently had the the privilege of mentoring a high school intern for the last five weeks through the UGA College of Ag Young Scholar Program. Uh so a little bit about the Young Scholar Program. It's essentially a five-week internship for high school students that are interested in science and agriculture and research and just exploring different options available through the College of Ag. And so students get paired up with a faculty mentor who guides them on a research project over the course of five weeks. They conduct that research project, they you know, work with the faculty members team, you know, doing other projects and work in the field and the lab and you know, whatever that that scientist is doing. But ultimately the student completes a project and puts together a poster presentation and then presents that project. Um, the program is offered in Tifton, Griffin, and Athens through the College of Ag. And so the students essentially all compete against each other with their poster presentations. Um, but um a young scholar Caitlin and I, Caitlyn from Barry and County, she just completed her project. Um so she came to me and told me she was interested in insects. And I said, Oh no. No. I only know about butterflies and bees. You know, what are we gonna what are we gonna do insect-wise? So thank goodness Dr. Roberts worked with us and helped us come up with a really neat project. And she actually worked in conservation and conventional tillage cotton, investigating fire ants and their benefit to the system and and what their preference was when it comes to that conservation versus conventional tillage, and is there a preference on cover crop species? And so she did a lot of background reading and research to better understand the beneficial fire ants in that production system. Fire ants, and I learned this as well from her. Fire ants are big predators of many problematic pests in cotton production. So we wanna we wanna foster fire ant populations and our production systems so they can eat all the bad stuff. And so she did a lot of background research. She can tell you every single insect larva that a fire ant eats, which was yeah, which was exciting. Um so then she went out to the field and we actually sampled uh cotton conservation and conventional tillage systems for fire ants. So she took about a one inch piece of what they call mixed protein source, i.e. a hot dog.
SPEAKER_04Hot dog.
SPEAKER_01Put it in a vial, set it out in that field for an hour, and then we collected those fire ants and counted how many were in the conservation versus conventional tillage. And the numbers were were massive. I mean, we were catching seven, eight hundred. Fire ants in an hour.
SPEAKER_04A little bitty piece of mixed protein.
SPEAKER_01What a ballpark beef hot dogs. So which was really fascinating. So conservation tillage is a huge benefit for fire ants. And then she took it a step further and actually looked at different types of cover crop systems to see if fire ants had a preference. And we looked at everything from cereal rye, crimson clover, multi-species mixtures. What she found was individually there wasn't, there didn't seem to be a preference on type of cover crop for those fire ants to build their habitats in. But when you start adding in more species to the mix, then we start to see an increase in those, about 25% increase in the fire ant population. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So fire ants are great product etymology.
SPEAKER_01It's a huge number of harmful uh insect pests that fire ants eat the larvae. I mean, huge.
SPEAKER_04They're one of our most important beneficial insects.
SPEAKER_01I had no idea.
SPEAKER_02Especially in a peanut system. No, it's not fun in a peanut system or any system with us doing sensors. They like electronics for some reason. Yeah. And so you get out there and get to working around stuff, and they're before you know it, they're all over you because they've built a nest around your maybe because we've loosened the soil too. That's probably part of it. But you know, they get all everything, and you know what happens pretty quickly.
SPEAKER_00It seemed to tell them your fire ant story from last year.
SPEAKER_02Last year.
SPEAKER_00I'd like to hear. I don't remember what happened.
SPEAKER_04Uh-oh. I got all blurred from all the jazz it's last year.
SPEAKER_00We were in the acid trial. We were all out there scouting. And you got into the fire ants. And you had to shake your face off.
SPEAKER_04It was bad. No wonder he blocked that one and mouth. He's the only one that blocked that one. I think that was in Appling County. Yeah, it was in Appling County.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank goodness we didn't we did not have any of those experiences this summer.
SPEAKER_04It happens, and I've seen that happen.
SPEAKER_01I can see it. I mean, it was unbelievable how many fire ants we were collecting, and it shocked me. I was worried we weren't gonna find nothing. I'm like, oh no, this project ain't gonna work out for her. We gotta have something.
SPEAKER_04And so so how many young scholars were in Tifton? You had the presentations yesterday.
SPEAKER_01So there were there were eight in Tifton. Um, and they're they're still growing the program in Tifton. Um, so for anybody listening, especially folks here on campus, they really need faculty mentors to participate. You know, more faculties that that can participate, the more students they can take. So we had eight in Tifton, I think there's 20-ish in Griffin and maybe 30 in Athens. Uh so there's an option on all three campuses, you just got to be able to commute to one of them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I had a a young lady in my neighborhood and she did a young scholar program in Griffin a few years ago. Cool. And now she works in the ag industry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Hey, get these kids interested in ag. So if you have a a child or a friend or acquaintance uh interested in science and agriculture, that's what we're trying to do is find good young people and try to get them to work in agriculture and make an make an impact.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02We we had a really good one that came through. Um he was local Tifton coal buyer. Some people knew his family. He came through and did two summers under my program way back. Uh went to UGA Athens in engineering, came back to um Tifton campus for a master's degree, and now works, I think, in the uh EPD office out of Atlanta or one of the department offices. It was a Cole's a great student. I tried to convince him to a PhD, he's worthy of it. He needed he said he'd wanted to work for a little while.
SPEAKER_01So he was thoroughly enjoyed it. It was it was really, really interesting to hear the projects that the students worked on. Yesterday was the final presentation day for Tifton, and then um the students are on their way to Athens now, or they'll participate in a um a two-day tour, UGA campus, stay in the dorms, visit the league. And then Friday is like the big presentation where everybody presents their poster. But um I thoroughly enjoyed hearing what all the students worked on and how their um their horizons have been broadened over the last five weeks and the number of students that are interested in exploring something related to agriculture science now. So it was really fun. I enjoyed it quite a bit. That's awesome. Very proud of her.
SPEAKER_04Great program.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Great program.
Aphids And Fungus Crash Explained
SPEAKER_04All right. Uh hey, I want to make a few comments about insects. Kind of led in with the ant. That's just so fascinating to me.
SPEAKER_01I know plenty of leftover.
SPEAKER_04When you came back, you talk about counting all those ants, and it was just like, oh my God.
SPEAKER_01It was that first day was bad. But we got plenty of leftover hot dogs, so let's do some more.
SPEAKER_04All right, so just a little bit on insects. Uh one of the things to touch on first uh is we are seeing uh the aphid fungus, primarily in southwest Georgia. Um, and it's kind of scattered around. But if you look at where aphids were really across the state of Georgia, they've been sporadic for some reason. They're just not real uniform. They're not heavy in all fields, they're heavy in some fields. Um, but where we have uh the highest aphid populations, we're starting to see them crash in the southwest part of the state. I think this crash of aphid populations is probably gonna be slow just because we don't have the population of aphids out there everywhere. I mean, the way that fungus works, once it starts, you know, it it overwinters in the soil, but it just builds up, and you know, we get spores floating all over the county, and uh I think it's gonna take a little while to crash out every field, but but we are seeing fields crash. Uh just as a reminder, you know, we typically see it first in the southwest part of the state, and that's gonna move north and east. So I'll start getting calls, you know, where's the fungus? But we know it's in southwest Georgia, but uh a little bit east of the interstate, uh, but it's gonna take, you know, another week or so before it moves over to the eastern side of our state. Uh but you know, we we rarely spray aphids, but uh one of the reasons because this fungus comes and just takes them out every year. It's just phenomenal. Glad we have
Plant Bug Pressure And Scouting Tips
SPEAKER_04it. Uh the other thing I'll mention uh is plant bugs. And uh, you know, plant bugs the last couple years. Uh Sarah and we went and looked at a lot of fields together, but you know, west of I-75, uh they're just becoming a more common pest, and that's true again this year. If we go east, a lot more sporadic, but I have talked with some folks from the eastern side of the state that have picked up plant bugs enough that they're concerned and watching and they're hoping they're not gonna have to treat. But typically uh we tend to see these plant bugs concentrate on some of our earliest planted cotton, and that held true again this year. You know, once cotton begins putting on or squaring, Wes, I I I made it a point to say putting on. I hope we don't have to talk about throwing off. You know, if you listen to the to the beginning of the podcast of putting on, throwing off, and cutting out. Well, let's just keep putting on and let's not throw off. But uh, but you know, we're seeing that once cotton squares, you know, it becomes attractive, and we just kind of hold them. And as more and more cotton squares, I'm not sure if we dilute plant bugs across all these acres or not, but you know, we have a problem now, and then it hopefully is just gonna slow down. But one of the things I would encourage folks to do, you know, in these historical areas, let's stay on them. Let's be timely with these inputs. Uh, if you're in one of these areas that plant bugs have become an annual problem, we need to look at using diamond, which is an insect growth regulator. Uh so let's be timely with that. If you have thrive on cotton, you know, we saw a tick up of thrive on cotton in some areas, and again, a lot of that has to do with plant bugs. And uh probably don't need the diamond on a thrive-on variety, but uh they kind of work the same. They help us just be able to manage the nymphs. Neither one of those technologies is secure all, but they do make it manageable. Uh we are picking up immature plant bugs in these areas, particularly on cotton that's blooming. And uh, you know, it takes a little bit of time for a plant bug egg to hatch. Uh, but you know, if you were gonna use diamond, a lot of times about first bloom is is the ideal timing for that first application. But that's kind of where we are with plant bugs and uh again scout every field. I mean, this stuff just changes, you know, and uh you can be within a mile or two and it just be a totally different game, Taylor. And uh it's just just phenomenal. But you know, be out there, let's make sure we're doing sweet swinging sweep nets on squaring cotton. And hey, when you get nymphs, uh hate to say it, but the drop cloth is our best sampling tool. That's a hard thing to do as a scout, but uh if you have problem fields, you know, you need to get a count so we can see, you know, access how we do when we do intervene uh with insecticides. But uh that's where we are on plant bugs.
Jassid Detections And What They Mean
SPEAKER_04All right, the last thing, I still get more questions about jazz than anything else. So we have now detected jazz in seven counties. And those counties are Tiff Grady Brooks, Coffee, Bacon, Cockwit, and Appling. It kind of makes sense. Uh we probably are seeing slightly higher numbers to our east, just like in in 2025. But uh we're trying to really understand uh where these things show up. And when I say detected, that could be one whisp. That means we detected a jazzet. Like we found them first in Tifton this year, was the first county. We detected. But we found them first in Tiff County because we spent an exorbitant amount of time looking. That's right. Because we wanted to know. You know, we the winter definitely impacted this insect. And uh, but if we can understand counties when we have a detection.
SPEAKER_01So when you say detection, that's different than infested.
SPEAKER_04Yes. That means we found one. You know, I think Kale Cloud in Grady County has found like a total of maybe five or six. But they were there.
SPEAKER_02Did he squish them all?
SPEAKER_04Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_00No reproduct uh like reproduction in field.
SPEAKER_04We haven't seen anything that we confirm can confirm to be reproduction. We see nymphs, but there's a look-alike jazzed, exact same size, and we're trying to get those identified. But uh so there's a big difference between detected and and approaching to a point where we need to treat. And that's another thing. You know, let's say we detect a jazzed today. Well, uh how long before we do get concerned about making an application? Is it one generation, two generations? I think it's probably two generations away. That could be maybe four weeks. So Jass has complete a generation every two weeks. So but that's gonna help us in the future. So if you're a grower consultant uh and you see a suspect, Jasset, you know, what we really like is a picture. We can only identify the adults looking for the two spots, but we're keeping a map um of these detections, and that's gonna help us in the future. You know, thank God we just started detecting them. What if we would have detected them in May? You know, it could have been a different game. But the other thing I'll mention, and this is something that's intriguing, uh, if you're out looking for jazz, every detection that we've had has been on blooming cotton. I find that interesting, you know? And if we go back to 2025, Sarah, we spent a lot of time. But initially, where we started treating jass was always our earliest plant of cotton. And uh, you know, who knows? We got a lot to figure out about this insect. Um, maybe there's something about the floral volatiles or whatever that attracts jas to blooming cotton.
SPEAKER_02I don't know, that would be interesting. I have a question for you, you may not have an answer to. You know, okra is one of your sentinel plants. An okra bloom looks similar to a cotton bloom. Have you? And a hibiscus bloom actually does too because they're on hibiscus. Have you noticed on okra when y'all have had because okra we plant earlier, we plant around the spring's blooming. Or you hadn't really, I mean, just curious since you said that about cotton.
SPEAKER_04You know, we're not monitoring okra. We're as much as we were. I mean, our initial detection here and in a couple counties was on okra.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_04And in every case it was blooming. But uh we're trying to keep this map. We have to be have consistency, so we're looking for detections on cotton. And uh but yeah, there may be something there, you know. I don't know. I I've got okra in my at my house, I've got hibiscus at my house. I hadn't seen a jass. But I've got like six ochra plants. You know, it's hard to keep I'm about tired of eating ochre off six plants, you know. But uh hey, we're a long ways from having needing to treat jasses, and I I really want people to understand we're talking about detected. And uh I can assure you, if we start seeing reproduction in fields and and we start seeing these populations grow, your county agent is gonna be the source of the most up-to-date information we have. Actually, you know, tomorrow will be one year since we saw the first chassis in the state of Georgia.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_04You know, a lot has happened, and you know, we're tracking probably pretty similar to, you know, if we would have been looking on cotton as hard as we are this year, last year, we'd probably have seen the same thing. Maybe they're at lower populations this year, we don't know. But we'll learn more as every week passes. And uh so hey, let's keep looking. If you see some jazzes, try to get a picture of them, send them to your county agent because we want to really understand this movement. I really think the winter weather, we killed them down to pretty pretty far in Florida, we think. I mean, we don't know, maybe a few survived. You know, we had a big freeze way down into South Florida this year.
SPEAKER_01Way, way down.
SPEAKER_04Way, way down, like all the way down to Homestead.
SPEAKER_01Which is very rare.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it was very rare. So we just think it's in our interest to really understand how these things are moving back in and infesting the state of Georgia to help us in years to come. But hey, that's about what I got. And from an insect standpoint.
Closing Advice And Staying In Touch
SPEAKER_04We good, Wes? We good, Tyler Sarah. Hey, and if you have questions, be sure to contact the county agent.
SPEAKER_03Thank 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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