Dow AgroScience: Don’t let weeds, worms and diseases decrease your cotton potential

Growers report new PhytoGen® brand varieties with WideStrike® 3 Insect Protection and the Enlist™ cotton trait offer improved control of yield-robbing pests and diseases while delivering the early season vigor and boll load they’ve come to expect from PhytoGen.

“The yield and quality are two reasons we grow PhytoGen,” says cotton producer Cody Young of Eufaula, Alabama. “That and the dependability — PhytoGen does what it’s supposed to do. The company has proven it can deliver. They’ve earned our trust,” he says.

Young has been growing cotton in southeast Alabama and southwest Georgia for about five years. He’s a member of an elite group of producers, the PhytoGen Horizon Network, and has grown PhytoGen brand varieties with WideStrike 3 Insect Protection and the Enlist™ cotton trait (W3FE) for two years. He believes they enable him to work more efficiently while protecting the yield and quality he expects from PhytoGen.

Young has been concentrating on weed control and learning more about the new Enlist weed control system. Exclusive to PhytoGen, the Enlist cotton trait provides tolerance to Enlist Duo® herbicide — a combination of new 2,4-D choline and glyphosate — as well as glufosinate, to help eliminate tough-to-control and resistant weeds.

“The Enlist technology is a better choice for us. It provides effective weed control and has worked very well. That, combined with the yield potential of PhytoGen, is the reason we’re trying it.”

Young says everyone’s situation is different and each grower needs to decide what’s right for his farm. Young also chose the Enlist weed control system for the ease of use and compatibility with other cropping systems. He also grows peanuts, so the system offered additional advantages for his operation.

“We have peanuts that we spray with 2,4-DB and that too played into our decision to grow W3FE varieties,” Young says.

While yield results will come later, Young says initial variety performance has been good. He reports PhytoGen® brand PHY 450 W3FE held up well in the face of Tropical Storm Cindy and that PhytoGen brand PHY 340 W3FE emerged in only four days. He’s eager to compare forthcoming yields with the high yielding PhytoGen brand varieties he’s grown in the past.

Growers and gins making this season their best with PhytoGen
Gene West, of Corner Cotton Gin and G&R Farms in Newton Grove, North Carolina, says he grows PhytoGen brand varieties because of consistent high-quality fiber.

“Since we have a gin, we see firsthand the importance of quality. When a bale of cotton is shipped overseas, it’s got to be good quality because consumers desire a higher-quality product,” West says.

West, also a PhytoGen Horizon Network grower, increased his acres of W3FE varieties this year after trying PhytoGen brand PHY 490 W3FE last year. West says PHY 490 W3FE had strong seedling vigor and puts on an excellent boll load. But he’s most excited about the trait package on this new variety.

“WideStrike 3 seems to control the bollworm pressure better. And with the Enlist weed control system, we will have something to help control these resistant pigweeds,” West says.

New W3FE varieties also include native traits to help cotton thrive even under unforeseen disease and nematode pressures. Growers can currently choose from numerous PhytoGen brand varieties with bacterial blight resistance, verticillium wilt tolerance and root knot nematode (RKN) resistance. In the near future, PhytoGen cottonseed varieties will also include native genes that have resistance to reniform nematodes.