By Clint Thompson
The Georgia Cotton Commission (GCC) and University of Georgia (UGA) Extension Cotton Team want its growers to make adjustments and learn from this production season ahead of next year.
Camp Hand, UGA Extension cotton agronomist, provides some of those lessons learned.
“It was a tough year in a lot of ways. First thing, we saw a little bit more of what people are calling cotton leafroll dwarf virus. It looks very similar to what bronze wilt was back in the late 90s. They are loosely associated with each other. We learned some new varieties are showing some of those types of symptoms. We’re going to be talking about that at winter meetings; risk factors associated with some of that,” Hand said.
“In southwest Georgia, we saw a lot of late plant bugs, which is something we don’t normally deal with. We normally get them early in the season, and they go away by the time we’re spraying stink bugs. This year they were around after we started spraying stink bugs, so we had to learn how to deal with that.
“Of course, the storm (Hurricane Helene) came in and did what it did. It was a tough year. It kind of wore on me more than it normally does, just because there was a lot more going on this time.”