Agricultural News
OSU's Seth Byrd Talks Harvest Aid Application for 2022 Cotton Crop
Wed, 21 Sep 2022 12:04:15 CDT
Farm Director, KC Sheperd, is visiting with Oklahoma State University Cooperative Extension Cotton Agronomist, Dr. Seth Byrd, talking about the latest on the cotton crop.
“There are some harvest aids going out,” Byrd said. “We are going to have a potentially earlier window for harvest aids than normal, although last year the fall we had really accelerated maturity in the progress of the crop.”
Harvest aid application, Byrd said, will ramp up over the next couple of weeks. Byrd said he has seen some good patches of cotton this year along with the bad.
“There have probably been more spots that look visually good, then once you get out in them, they are not as good as you’ve hoped,” Byrd said. “There is still some good-looking cotton around. Obviously, some of the irrigated crop has got a little bit better water and had a fairly good year.”
Byrd said there was still some surprisingly good looking dry-land relative to the year.
“This is the exact type of September you would like to see in a lot of years,” Byrd said. “A hot and dry September really isn’t a bad thing if you’ve got a crop with a big bowl load, you’re a little bit behind, and you need some natural senescence from the leaves.”
The conditions this September won’t hurt anything, Byrd said, because at this point, yield potential was made a month ago in a year like this.
“This won’t hurt much, but we are not probably going to see the benefit on leaf senescence that we would maybe hopefully see in a year with a September this warm and dry,” Byrd said.
Regarding acreage that will need a harvest aid application, Byrd said it is not ideal to have to apply a little more product this year due to the drought, especially with low yield and low prices.
“Definitely more cotton was planted than last year, but it’s not going to be more harvested, that is for sure,” Byrd said. “That is definitely a problem.”
Because of the impact that environmental conditions have had on the cotton crop, Byrd said it is going to be a challenging year for harvest aids.
“The leaves on the plant are proving to be a little bit more difficult to remove than we would like to see, and again, we don’t want to put much more money into this,” Byrd said. “So, we are having them (producers) play with some different options to try to financially responsibly get these leaves off of the plants.”
In years like this, Byrd said it is hard to learn from variety trials because conditions are not ideal.
“It is really hard to take data from a year like this and apply it until you get to a year like this again,” Byrd said.
On the other hand, Byrd said this year had helped to see what varieties can hold up against drought and heat stress.
Click the LISTEN BAR below to listen to KC Sheperd and Seth Byrd talking about this year’s cotton crop.
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