Narromine, New South Wales

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Narromine cotton grower Rob Tuck (photo), outlines the challenges he experienced with Bollgard® II management issues.

Rob, you had two varieties this year. What were those two varieties?

We had the Sicala V-3 Roundup Ready® type, which was CSX407 and we had the S40 Sicala 40 type Roundup Ready; two Roundup Ready varieties.

Obviously the Roundup Ready fits into your program well?

Yes Craig, we love Roundup Ready. We trailed Roundup Ready back in 1998 I think when it was first under trial and there was a bit kicking around and we did a trial plot with Roundup Ready and we converted our whole farm to Roundup Ready by 2000 and haven’t looked back since. We’re 100% Roundup Ready and will be to stay, it’s just a very good management tool.

Rob looking at the start of last season; planting dates. Did you get the crop in on time, as how you wanted it or what are your thoughts on planting dates?

As we know it was a pretty rough start last year. We had that warm period early in September but then we had that cold snap that came through and we decided because we had this Bollgard® II trial farm and there wasn’t a lot of seed around we decided to hang off and our limited knowledge, we didn’t know that Bollgard was a plant that could give us a week or two of earliness so we decided to hang off that couple of weeks, so we didn’t end up planting until around about 15th/16th October, which is very late for us. Usually we are going in the first week and we didn’t water up until about the 20th, so we were a couple of weeks behind schedule there trying to beat the cold weather but as we all know that after we watered up we still managed to get two frosts, so it was a pretty tough start.

So, planting date; do you think there’s an option to go a little bit later as far as with the Bollgard technology?

Yes definitely, I mean here we are watering up on the 20th October, which is two weeks behind our schedule and once the sun did come out and shine and the frost disappeared and the plants grew out of a bit of root disease that they picked up in the cold weather, yes it didn’t look back and we were still picking two weeks in front of the conventional varieties around us here that the neighbors had.

Planting rates, did you vary the planting rates at all like to establish any more plants per metre?

Yes, pretty important plant stand, you need plant stand. All of the knowledge that we’d sourced out there said that the higher plant stands were coming up with the money, so we aimed at about 20 plants to the metre and I think we established somewhere from 15 to 18 in most fields, which I’m glad we did now with that cold start, it really made a difference.

So, on the nutrition front did you do anything different with your Bollgard® II cotton?

Nutrition wise we really kept the goodies up to it. We ended up putting a couple of hundred units of N underneath upfront and then we side dressed with another hundred units, so it’s a fair bit of N, I mean on our Conventional varieties here over the years, two hundred to two twenty units has been about where we have been at so we’re up to another 80 units of N, so it’s a fair bit of N under our country and we haven’t soil tested any of this country now that the pick is over to see what residual N we’ve got there but the crop needed every bit of it. For a big biomass crop I’d say it’s really going to use some N.

And as far as end crop monitoring goes, did you do any leaf or tissue analysis?

We did, we had a pretty good schedule this year. We put a fair bit of potassium under our country, about 40-50kgs and we also used a couple of kgs of zinc sulphate monohydrate under our plants and we know this country is black mile country and responds pretty well to zinc. But the leaf analysis showed up pretty well all the way through the year. We did 4 to 5 foliars on most fields, but mainly just a phosphorus potassium zinc based foliar fertilizer but it dropped off towards the end but that’s expected.

Moving on to early season monitoring of pests and also plant mapping. Do you have any comments on that?

Yes, it’s a different animal we’re dealing with this Bollgard. I’ve been doing my own agronomy now for 5 years and you know even Ingard was a bit of a challenge but with Bollgard this year we didn’t know how the efficacy was going to be and you know we started off the year counting a lot of eggs and covering a lot of rows as you do, but as we sort of got into it during the season and we learnt more about the plant and saw how the efficacy was hanging on we sort of steered away a bit from the egg counting eventually. We were seeing eggs of 20-30 eggs to the metre and the genes were doing the job and cleaning them up in that very small instar stage, so we leant more towards plant mapping then, which I think that’s where we have to go. We plant mapped every week, full plant maps and it really helped us along with our nutrition and also our water management and at the end of that day it made defoliation a breeze.

So the plant mapping and monitoring, did you use the early season diagnostic tool on the web at all or did you have the chance to look at it at all?

We did use it, we used it as a bit of an indication but the trouble is there wasn’t a lot of information on Bollgard crops, so the diagnostic tool was a little bit out from what we saw. According to the tool we should have been putting 3 to 4 litres of pix on and with this plant that is running at 95 to 98% fruit retention we were a bit dubious about doing that. We thought, you know the plant has got the fruit load there, it’s going to shut itself down, so a lot of fields we didn’t pix and probably looking back at it now maybe we should have used some little doses up front early on in the piece. One particular field that was a pretty hot field we went in with 600ml in early January and then when we came back for our cut out pix it really did the job and pulled that field up well. So I think we’ve got a lot to learn about pix and Bollgard but yes, it’s something that the diagnostic tools haven’t sort of got all of the information in there yet but I think the seed companies are all working pretty hard on it, so hopefully by next year we’ll have a lot more information.

With irrigation monitoring and management, did you have to change anything there as far as the way you water and timing of waterings etc?

Not really, like we run on capacitance probes here and we run pretty well to schedule there and you know we’ve been irrigating and growing cotton in this country for 15 years so we’ve got a pretty good idea of what the soils can do and what they can’t do. I suppose with the Bollgard we knew that there is such a huge fruit load on these plants that we couldn’t afford one little stress so back in those couple of peak periods where we were 40 odd degree heat waves we brought our waterings forward three or four days even though the probes were saying we could have hung on a couple of days we but we just brought the watering forward to make sure and yes you could see when we picked it that any little red patch in the filed that did happen to get only one day of stress really paid the price. So, I think a plant that’s really performing and really pouring a lot on you’ve got to keep the water up to it.

Looking at late season management, particularly pest management, how did you go there and what are your thoughts? Would you do anything different next season?

I was writing a Monsanto testimonial the other day and a little comment that I plucked out of the air somewhere at about 10o’clock at night when I was trying hard to get to bed and finish writing it was that the Bollgard really came through with the goods and the beneficials that were there was just amazing but the only complaint I had to Monsanto was that at picking time when the picker has got to the end of the rows there were that many spiders over the heads that the ground crew were complaining that they thought it was an occupational health and safety about picker maintenance so that’s one complaint I’ve got but no the beneficials were did the job, we had some mites there towards the end, which we usually do, we usually end up with a miticide in this country towards the end. It’s not that heavy mite country but we had a bit of faith in the beneficials that were there and the mites never really got away and in the end the thrips turned around and nailed them, so yes it was good the beneficials were there and did the job.

Moving onto late season finishing the crop off. Were you able to utilize the longer growing season the warmth and continuing warm weather to put on a little bit more fruit that what you normally would have been able to?

I don’t know about that, like the efficacy being so good and the fruit retention so good on these plants, like I said they ran in the high 90’s all the way through their life and it only wasn’t until right at the end where it started to crop away. Yes I don’t think we would have had much of a chance to put any more fruit on it like the Bollgard varieties when it was time to finish up they just stopped, bang overnight, so it made it a breeze to defoliate, it was very easy because you’ve got none of those late laterals or tipping out laterals. It made picking decisions or defoliation decisions pretty good, so it just comes back to show that it’s a plant that you’re pushing to such extremes that I don’t think you can afford to have any little stress whether it’s nutrition, water, anything like that. I think the margin for errors is not that great so yes it defoliated well.

And looking at picking, how did it end up as far as yields and those two varieties and also fibre quality?

Yields were good, I mean both fields yielded around about the four bales maybe a little bit better or both varieties I should say, they were in three or four different fields. So they yielded very well, we were very happy with that. Quality in both varieties was fantastic, you know 21’s, two leaf and the length was great, 37’s, 38’s so I think the spinners are going to be happy with Bollgard and I think it’s really coming up with the goods. There’s been talk about that the quality wasn’t going to be there but I think we’ve proven this year that it’s there.

And looking at next season, I guess water permitting in a lot of situations, but how do you see your farm next year as far as Bollgard percentage goes?

We’ll go with our 92.7% again if we get the nod from the regulator. I think it’s a fantastic tool and I think we’ve got to take the bull by the horns and run with it I think. It’s great technology; we’ve got it so lets use it.

Further Information:  Robert Eveleigh, John Marshall,  Craig McDonald or David Kelly