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You know we've got one of the earliest crops we've ever had
This year.
We had cotton planted in March
Which is crazy, I've never seen that before.
Uh, this cotton was planted in April
Uh to my recollection but uh
As you look out there you'll see a lot of blooms
Towards the top of that plant.
And that's kinda what we're seeing statewide
We had early planting window.
We had the majority of our crop planted by the first of May.
And that is really unusual.
Especially when you look at last year
And we didn't even get to start until after the 20th of May.
Uh, so we, we've got a very early crop
We have set a lot of fruit on the lower part of this plant
Uh everywhere.
And so we, we actually started fruiting this year on nodes 4
Which is, you know you don't hardly ever see that
And that's almost too low, I don't even know
If the picker can pick that.
So uh, you know we started on 5 and 6 on average
And we have a lot of retention on 2nd and 3rd position this year.
On, on you know, just about every fruiting branch.
Uh so we've got a heavily loaded crop
Yeah we've done some position counting and
And even on uh, I've had a lotta calls about man my cotton
We only have about 16, 17 total nodes.
When usually I have 21 to 24.
And you know we can make good cotton on cotton like that
Especially we did some counts the other day
We were averaging 22 to 24 position counts
On 16 node cotton. Uh
I mean that's a, that's a lot of 2nds and 3rds making that up
So, uh with the cloudy weather we've had
And the rains, I'm sure you know this field in particular
We were here one day raining; you can see all the dry bloom tags down through there.
I mean we had a tremendous shed
On some 2nd and 3rd positions in this particular field last week.
And I'm sure and a lot of that's because of the load
And uh, you know we've been taking node above whiteflower counts
And we've actually; the terminals grown some because of the rain.
So we're actually gaining some extra nodes now, so uh
But you know I think in average, we got a pretty good crop this year
If we can hold it and we can get it in the module,made and sent to the gin.
Down here up through to the I40 corridor and up
You know it looks in general really good.
Some of our worst looking cotton is probably in Northeast Arkansas.
We had a tremendous time getting started
Uh, getting a good stand, keeping the thrips off of it and the disease off of it this year.
So, you know if we had a place that's struggling
It's probably Northeast Arkansas and the Bootheel of Missouri here in the Mid South (231)
So, you know, we're fortunate we can irrigate.
Uh I know in Tennessee where they can't we talked about ratoon crops in rice
They have a ratoon crop, they don't want one, but they've got one anyway
On Cotton because uh they had a crop made and it stopped growing
And then they got some rain this last week as well and it started growing again.
SO they're going to have two different crops on the same stalk
But you know they're gonna get, because we're so early
They're going to have the potential to make on both of them probably.
So, uh it's good for everybody, this rain um in general
Kinda helped everybody out over here.
But really what we're looking at, uh getting back to the project here
We've got an irrigation study here and I really want to thank uh
David Roberts and Larry and Dr. Brye for allowing us to do some work here on the station
It's a great place to do work.
And uh and David has done a great job keeping up with these plots and uh
We ask him to do a lot and uh he sure, every year he comes through for us
Cause we can't be here all the time.
But we, this is a great place to do irrigation work in cotton
Because the field is so short, we can get our four replications in
And keep water off the plots we don't need to water
So it's, it's a really good place to do that
And, and we do have some non-irrigated plots out here
The first set, yeah and then you'll see some red flags
Kinda through the canopy there, there's another set.
You know itís hard to tell with the rain we've got.
So I don't know how much we really are going to get out of this irrigation study this year.
But in years past it's, it's provided us a lot of data.
Now uh in years past, what we've done,uh four years ago
With uh work through cotton incorporated
Uh, we did a timing study. so we wanted to look at when
Is the, you know the most critical point to start putting water on that crop.
And what we found is that week to 10 days
In some years, a dry year like this we had in June, sometimes it's 14 days
But the critical point is right before bloom.
We're talking 10 to 14 days before bloom.
And, and you, and, and when we think about, just you know this year
We didn't have much rain at all in June and we had to water some up.
So we started a lot earlier than that this year.
So every year is going to be different in the Mid South
But if we have enough moisture to get it going
Generally the crop doesn't require a lot of moisture,
Cotton doesn't, until we start squaring.
And when you see that Terminal slow down and those squares getting big
Towards the top of the Terminal we know that our Terminal growth has stopped
For the most part, ok.
The idea of starting early
Means that I prevent that Terminal from stopping to grow.
Ok, I want to continue that Terminal on its growing, I want to continue
My, my the building of nodes above my first fruiting position.
And that keeps me on track to being earlier.
It doesn't mean, like this non irrigated cotton here
That it can't recover, but in the end what you end up doing is shedding more fruit
And having a later crop.
Is is what it boils down to. So we want to stay on time.
If we if we're early you know right now
Spider mites and plant bugs are hitting us pretty hard across the state
The earlier we are the less we have to spray for those type of pests.
And then Budworm Boll worm complexes move in and other worm species
So you know early is good.
Um but what we've got here
Is uh sensor based irrigation ok.
These are smart field sensors, this is fairly new technology
And, and you can see them out there on stakes above the cotton canopy
And what we're measuring is canopy temperature.
What those measure is canopy temperature
And they're all linked
Uh, to this weather station over here.
And the algorithm that smart field uses
Takes the canopy temperature in effect as well as
The uh air temperature, soil moisture, uh uh evapotranspiration
All these different uh things and puts them together
And makes a recommendation based on stress when to water the crop.
That's their idea behind this technology ok.
But we haven't, this is the second year I guess that we have worked
With these sensors, but what we're comparing them to
We have 5 different varieties planted in this field
And the reason we wanted to look at different varieties is because
We found out the last several years is these varieties
Act a lot different to irrigation.
And, and some in particular like 499, Kyle.
375 uh tends to act a little different uh to irrigation than 499 does.
And, and we found out with Stoneville 5288
So we've got 5 varieties planted across here
And what we're looking at is either non irrigated
Or we're looking at uh our 2 inch deficit which is our current state recommendation
For cotton sitting on silt loam soil
Uh, based on our irrigation scheduler program.
That that we can uh find on the website.
So we've got 2 inch scheduled deficit irrigation
And then we have this smart field uh irrigation timing.
And what we're doing is these sensors, there's a ton of them out here
And then the weather station all link up to a modem
And that modem uh in their smart field program
I can go online and type in my little uh login and password
And it'll show me the temperature, the Canopy temperature
And then the stress level based on the algorithm that they have
Of those plots.
So I know, that well when it reaches this threshold
That they've developed, and this is, this is a work in progress
This is by no means ready to be taken to a field
But based on their recommendation on those parameters
I need to water right now.
And I can look online and find that out, ok.
And without even having to go to a field.
And we know that, you know with farms getting bigger
And the increase in technology that we have with smart phones and all this
You know, there's a lot more farms managed now uh from a computer
It seems like than there are actually on the turnrow .
You know we can turn on wells with a phone
You know now, if they're rigged up for that way, so
You know this will give us an opportunity if it does work
We can do some pretty good field monitoring
Uh based on the stress level and determine
Which field needs irrigating when.
Because when we've, we look at it on a grower basis
You know I've done several irrigation studies on grower farms
And their schedule is, every week I water this set.
You know, and that's
That's practical for them and really on our schedule
And a lot of times during peak bloom, it matches up pretty well
But uh, but you know, we can be better than that.
We can do better than that on saving water and
Saving some money with diesel fuel I think.
Uh and and, and these sensors may help us do that, so
Uh you know I, we're I'm pretty interested to see what
What comes of this but uh, you know
Irrigation work is frustrating for me,
It's good for the growers when we get rain
But when we get rain, that's frustrating to me,
So, it's a lot better to do irrigation work in Texas, Bill.
That's the best place to do irrigation work.
But anyway that's what we've got going on,uh
Bill, I don't know how much time I have left, but
>>Bill: Five minutes
I'll go ahead and take some questions then and uh
We can talk about anything; it doesn't have to be about this.
>>person from audience: How's the crop across the state overall, good?
>>Dr. Barber: I'd rate it as good, you know, better than good
Between good and excellent I guess overall, uh
Like I said, we've got some trouble in Northeast Arkansas
Hope we can kinda catch up with up there.
Overall I think it's going to be good and we need a good crop
Because you know last year at this time we probably had 80% of our crop booked
At over a dollar, this year we have maybe 20% of our crop booked
At 75 cents, and you know the market's not helping us right now.