Item: Favorable For Rust?Item: To Flex Or Not To Flex?Item: Sacramento Seed Biz Emerges

Weather Favorable For Rust?: This has been an exceptionally warm winter, so far, throughout much of the Midsouth and parts of the Southeast, and that’s raising concerns about the potential for Asian soybean rust spores to make it through the winter at a higher latitude. In other words, the disease could overwinter on kudzu and gain a geographic headstart when the season begins. Ed Sikora, Auburn University Extension Plant Pathologist, reported Tuesday that 2 kudzu patches in Montgomery County first observed with soybean rust on Jan. 12 were still alive. “The location is approximately 125 miles north of the Florida Gulf Coast,” he estimated in a summary filed on USDA’s soybean rust website. “Most of the 2 patches are dormant. One patch was in a protected site on the north side of an underpass off of Interstate 85, while the other patch was hanging in a tree along a bluff of the Alabama River. Growers in south Alabama
should be on the lookout for kudzu patches with green tissue surviving in protected areas. Contact your local extension agent with this information so that the patch can be monitored this winter as a potential overwintering site for soybean rust.”

To Flex Or Not To Flex: Keith Edmisten, NCSU Cotton Specialist, sent us the following thoughts on picking cotton varieties this season:

• Growers need to evaluate which available technology is best for them. Roundup Ready Flex may be worth it to a grower with large acreage who might have trouble timing over-the-top applications of Roundup. A grower might also have a portion of his acreage that he feels very confident that timely Roundup applications can be made. The same grower may have remote fields or wet natured fields that may be more difficult to follow the 4-leaf over-the-top rule for standard Roundup Ready. Roundup Ready Flex might be a good option for those fields.

• Growers should still look at varieties with the best yield potential and fiber quality that will not cause discounts while weighing the value of technology on a particular field. In the past, we have often seen growers make wholesale shifts to one or two varieties when a new genetic technology is introduced. This does not spread risk and can lead to problems across the entire farm. Producers should try to minimize risk by using several varieties and not put too much acreage into any unproven variety.

Sacramento Valley Flourishes As Cotton Seed Source: The following item appeared this week in California Farm Bureau's Food & News Report. "Cotton farmers in the Sacramento Valley have seen growing demand for their crops, from seed companies. Farmers estimate that up to half the cotton grown in the valley is used to produce seed for later crops. Seed marketers say the Sacramento Valley has produced consistent cottonseed crops the past few years, while producers in Texas and other states have suffered from weather problems. As a result, the Sacramento Valley has enhanced its reputation for producing high-quality cottonseed."

On the wire: Muted Reaction In Nybot Cotton To China Higher Output

And we quote: "Tradition is a guide and not a jailer." -- W. Somerset Maugham