
Following the 2025 Beltwide Cotton Conference in New Orleans, Farm Director KC Sheperd caught up with the new OSU Cotton specialist Jenny Dudak for a rundown on what was discussed. The three days of individual reports, panel discussions, hands-on workshops, and seminars were designed to provide attendees with the information needed to help producers make key cotton production/marketing-related decisions.
Dudak judged Weed Science Oral Presentations by students. She said, “I saw a lot of good presentations regarding herbicide usage in cotton.”
In other presentations, she mentioned hearing some exciting things regarding the new Axant Flex Cotton with BASF and PhytoGen reps saying that they weren’t adding anything new for the next season but rather sticking with E1 or non-Roundup-ready cotton.
“They were really excited about their packages moving forward,” she said. “There was a lot of good information shared and as always, there were really good conversations with cotton specialists across the United States to discuss what everybody else is doing and looking at. It was a very good time.”
Sheperd brought up potential changes to EPA regulations under the incoming Trump administration, specifically those regarding Dicamba, which is a popular selective systemic herbicide used to control annual, biennial, and perennial broadleaf weeds in a variety of food and feed crops.
“The loss of Dicamba would be devastating,” Dudak said. “We do have producers in the state of Oklahoma who plant Dicamba cotton, so they need to be thinking about alternatives or what they may use moving forward if they choose to stick with that Dicamba cotton.”
She mentioned two things for producers to keep in mind going forward: to make sure they are putting down residual preemergent to be sure that fields are clean starting out, increasing the possibility of staying clean throughout the growing season, and utilizing other post-emergence options such as Liberty or Roundup.
“Taking a tool out of the toolboxes of our cotton producers always makes things harder and we already have plenty of challenges,” Dudak emphasized. “We do have some resistance to Roundup in our state, so that is a touch-and-go product. Liberty is dependent on weather conditions and types of weeds as to whether it works well or not. I would really like to push making sure that we are putting residuals out pre, and tank-mixing residuals to cover a broader spectrum of weeds.”
She said that if the fields can stay clean until the plants canopy, the canopy provides its own weed control for the plants.
Currently, she says that cotton producers need to be focused on fertilizing fields and researching insecticides as Acephate is also rumored to be on the EPA chopping block.
After her conversation with Sheperd, Dudak was planning to travel to Charleston, South Carolina, for the Southern Weed Science Society meeting, and the following week, she will attend the Red River Crops Conference in Childress, Texas.
“We have a great lineup of speakers,” she said of the Red River Crops Conference. “The agenda is pretty full, and I think it should be a really good time.”
After the Red River Crops Conference, her next planned event will be the Great Plains Cotton Conference in Wichita, Kansas. She will then be going back to Texas for the Southwest Cotton Physiology Conference in Lubbock, Texas.