Category Archives: Archive
2017 Texas A&M AgriLife Bushland Forage Sorghum Silage Trial
by Jourdan Bell, Jourdan.bell@ag.tamu.edu Ed Bynum, EBynum@ag.tamu.edu Ted McCollum, Ted.McCollum@ag.tamu.edu Ronnie Schnell, ronschnell@tamu.edu The 2017 Texas A&M AgriLife Bushland forage sorghum silage trial consisted of 78 entries including forage sorghum, sorghum-sudangrass, sudangrass, and grain sorghum hybrids under center pivot irrigation. Two corn hybrids were included for comparative purposes. Due to declining well capacities across the Texas High Plains, forage sorghums are a drought tolerant option to meet the increasing silage demands of both the beef feedlot and dairy industries. The large scale of the Bushland trial provides producers… Read More →
Sesame for Texas in 2018
by Dr. Calvin Trostle, Extension Agronomy, TAMU Dept. of Soil & Crop Sciences, Lubbock, 806-746-6101, ctrostle@ag.tamu.edu Sesame is a heat-tolerant, drought-tolerant crop that has a good fit in much of Texas’ drier regions. It is grown in the Rolling Plains, South Plains, Concho Valley, Texas Wintergarden, Coastal Bend, and Lower Rio Grande Valley. Limitations to the Norwest include cooler temperatures associated with elevation > 4,000’, and in North & Central Texas, as one approaches I-35 from the west the tendency for greater disease issues increase due to higher… Read More →
Texas auxin-specific training receives reciprocity with Oklahoma and New Mexico
by Scott Nolte, scott.nolte@tamu.edu and Mark Matocha, mmatocha@ag.tamu.edu The Texas Department of Agriculture approved auxin-specific herbicide training, developed by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and Allied Industry, has been reciprocally approved by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry and the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. In the fall of 2017, the U.S. EPA revised the labels for the three dicamba products, (Engenia, FeXapan, and XtendiMax), approved for use on dicamba tolerant soybean and cotton varieties. One of the label changes included a mandate that anyone (applicators… Read More →
2017 High Plains RACE Trial Results Now Available
by Seth Byrd, seth.byrd@ag.tamu.edu and Jourdan Bell, jourdan.bell@ag.tamu.edu The results of the 2017 Replicated Agronomic Cotton Evaluations (or RACE) Trials for the High Plains are now available at Cotton.tamu.edu. These trials encompass both the Northern and Southern High Plains regions and provide growers with information critical to cotton production in these regions, including yield, fiber quality, and maturity measurements. The results are divided into two sections, with section one consisting of the pooled data and individual results of the 13 trials in the Southern High Plains, while section… Read More →
South, East, and Central Texas RACE and Monster Trial Results
by Gaylon Morgan, Josh McGinty, and Dale Mott The 2017 Cotton Variety Results for the Lower Rio Grande Valley, Coastal Bend, Upper Gulf Coast, Winter Garden and Blacklands are available at Cotton.tamu.edu/ or going directly to Cotton Variety Testing. This booklet includes 15 large-plot on-farm trials and 3 Monster Trials. The location specifics for each trial location is listed in Table 1, including the cooperator, planting and harvest dates, and other agronomic considerations. We recommend growers gather as much information as possible from this RACE booklet and other sources on… Read More →
Dicamba Label Update and Mandatory Training for Applicators
by Scott Nolte, State Extension Weed Scientists; Gaylon Morgan, State Extension Cotton Specialist; Josh McGinty, Extension Agronomist at Corpus Christi; Pete Dotray, Weed Scientist at Lubbock. Dicamba tolerant cotton and soybean varieties were brought to the market in 2015 and 2016, respectively, and were followed in 2017 by the newly registered dicamba herbicides formulated specifically to have lower volatility. Following a challenging launch in 2017 of these newly registered herbicides in some states, the EPA worked with companies registering the new dicamba formulations to make revisions to those… Read More →
Crediting Soil Nitrogen in Wheat Can Cut Costs Without Cutting Yield
by Dr. Clark Neely, Statewide Small Grains and Oilseed Extension Specialist, College Station, TX Dr. Jake Mowrer, Statewide Soil Fertility Specialist, College Station, TX Dr. Emi Kimura, Regional Extension Agronomist, Vernon, TX Dr. Dennis Coker, Soil Fertility Program Specialist, College Station, TX Russell Sutton, Assistant Research Scientist, Commerce, TX Daniel Hathcoat, Small Grains Program Specialist, College Station One of the foremost questions on many wheat producers’ minds this year is “Will I make any money on wheat?” While it is true wheat prices are down and many budgets… Read More →
Many Producers aren’t seeing it….It’s all about what’s underground
by Tony Provin, Professor and Extension Soil Chemist and Ronnie Schnell, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist-Cropping Systems ronschnell@tamu.edu The era of remote sensing, aerial drones, satellite imaging and GPS/GIS has most producers focusing on the visible issues present in their fields. The Soil Health movement is attempting to increase the awareness of the functions of soil and how to enhance or maintain our nation’s most critical natural resource. Whether it’s Texas or the central corn-belt, the root of most problems (pun intended) is actually roots, or lack of. … Read More →
Post-Harvest Handling of a Corn Field Affected by Fumonisin Contamination
by Thomas Isakeit, Professor and Extension Plant Pathologist, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Texas A&M University, College Station; Jourdan Bell, Assistant Professor and Agronomist, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Amarillo; Ted McCollum III, Professor and Extension Beef Cattle Specialist, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center, Amarillo Fumonisins are toxins produced in corn kernels by two species of fungi (Fusarium verticillioides and F. proliferatum). These toxins are carcinogens and can cause illness in livestock, particularly in horses. The levels of fumonisin allowed in food and… Read More →
Crop Testing Program Hybrid Trial Results—2017
by Calvin Trostle, Extension Agronomy, Lubbock, (806) 723-8432, ctrostle@ag.tamu.ed Katrina Horn, Crop Testing Program director, (806) 845-8505, khorn@tamu.edu Ron Schnell, Cropping Systems Extension Agronomy, College Station, (979) 845-2935, ronschnell@tamu.edu A unit of Texas A&M AgriLife is the Crop Testing Program, http://varietytesting.tamu.edu/, which has been functioning for over 40 years. The program offers fee-based public testing of corn, grain sorghum, and sunflower hybrids and one large forage sorghum silage trial. The above webpage also publishes data from other AgriLife crop trials conducted outside the auspices of the Crop Testing… Read More →