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Bollgard® II cotton offers significant management advantages for dryland cotton growers. Three dryland cotton growers from across the industry share their experiences with Bollgard® II from the 2003-04 season.

Martin Dunlop

I’ll just ask you a little bit about your Bollgard® II experience last season. How much did you end up growing and what were the varieties?

We ended up growing 15%. I guess that was because we had 25% INGARD®, we could grow a maximum of 40% Bt cottons, so we ended up with 15% Bollgard. We grew just one variety of Bollgard® II and that was CSX 401, which is Siokra V-16B.

And do you have any comments in terms of yield on how it went compared to I guess your conventional and your Ingard?

Our Ingard yielded about 20% higher than our Conventional, which is about normal that we’ve experienced since we’ve been growing Ingard and then the Bollgard was another 10% higher than that, so about 30% above conventional yield.

The other thing I know, some people have had issues with fibre quality. How did you go as far as fibre quality on the Bollgard?

The quality, I would say there’s no significance difference from the conventional, the Ingard and the Bollgard.

Getting onto management and budgeting and so forth, any benefits in terms of growing the crop; Bollgard compared to conventional? What would they be?

Rob, the main benefits I would see would be ease of management. It frees you up to do other things around the farm so you don’t get behind with your fallow management and other crops you might be growing. Cotton can be a bit demanding, especially if you hit a bad insect pressure time. Bollgard sort of frees you up from that. The benefit I guess that we’ve seen with Ingard and now Bollgard is the yield difference. We’re not seeing so much of a cost saving in the insect control but rather the benefits we see is in the yield benefit.

Coming back to the insect control in a bit more detail. How did you find that last year on your Bollgard?

The Bollgard looked after the helis really well. I don’t think there was a single caterpillar come through that but we had Mirid pressure right through the season from pre squaring right through. They were just below threshold for most of the season so we just kept an eye on fruit retention and when the fruit retention started to drop off we sprayed for Mirids and sucking pests. I think we did two applications for that.

With all those things considered for this coming season, what do you think you’ll do proportion wise for Bollgard this year; I mean there’s basically a removal of the cap on Bollgard so it just comes down to refuge. Will you grow more or will you stick around the same sort of level?

What I’ve decided to do this season is probably go more cotton all together and grow 90% Bollgard, 10% unsprayed refuge and that way I can manage a bigger crop a lot easier with the Bollgard.

Do you think you’ll do anything different this year? Any thoughts on changes you’d make compared to last season?

The only change I might make is, since we’ve been growing cotton; we’ve just had seven crops, is we’ve always had single skip cotton. I might grow half double skip this season just to cut down the cost of the licencing.

In terms of Dryland it’s a bit of a difficult question, but any thoughts on planting date, what your preferred planting date would be?

Basically what we’ve done in the past I think I’ll do again this season, is when we get planting moisture we go and plant the crop, anytime from the end of September on.

Ben Coulton

You grew some Dryland Bollgard II last year, what varieties did you grow and what sort of areas?

Dave we grew two varieties of Bollgard Dryland, about 132ha roughly – Sicot 13B and Sicot 14B.

How did you go in terms of yield?

In yield the 13B was extremely good. It was 1.7 to 1.8. The 14B was about 1.4 to 1.5. They were obviously in two different fields and also the 13B was more favorable as far as the storms were concerned later in the season. The 13B it got in very, very quickly, very, very early and loaded everything up and as I say the storms helped it out at the end and finished it off.

And how did they both go in terms of quality?

Quality wise the 14B was absolutely excellent. There wasn’t a problem anywhere with the 14B. The 13B we were very, very disappointed with as it was actually some of the first micronaire penalty we’d suffered in this country for many, many years and about 90% of it was affected by high mic.

What sort of benefits did you see with the Bollgard II in terms of the whole management of your farm?

The Bollgard here at “Getta”, we’re a mixed farming operation like a lot of Dryland farmers are, you know with cattle through to your cereal croppings through to your legumes etc, so we don’t want to make the cotton a big issue, it’s got to blend in as best we can with the other businesses that we do here and we found the Bollgard was extremely good for that, especially in the situation around that Christmas/New Year period for insecticide sprays.

With traditional cotton you’re always just like a loaded gun, you’ve always got a tractor and a man sort of half on standby ready for the go and in those periods of times it’s always awkward to have a key man type of fella that you need to have to spray and we’ve found with the Bollgard, I mean if you’ve got so called suckers that you’re chasing they’ve got a target window probably a little bit bigger than what you have with heliothis, you know it’s a timing thing of course.

Last year you grew the CSIRO advanced line trial Bollgard within a conventionally sprayed field. What sort of observations did you make there?

The Bollgard varieties were just absolutely extraordinary David, compared to our conventional varieties in the trial. Of course the Bollgards were sprayed at the same times that the conventionals were sprayed, so they had an absolute proper insect free year there’s no doubt about that but I mean they were talking a third of a bale better, you know up towards that two bales and in our country that is very, very good yields.

What proportion of Bollgard II do you reckon you’ll grow this season?

We’ll grow the lot Dave. We’ll go 92%. We ummed and aared, we were worried about the social issues for our suppliers etc on that. I know with the CSIRO trying to do a trial here this year by doing all Bollgards it’s extremely difficult for them to keep their traditional lines coming up through, so there’s a lot of little hidden problems like that but we’re going to go 92% Bollgard. We’ve been very, very happy with what we’ve seen over the last couple of years.

Given a years experience with Bollgard II in Dryland, what sort of management considerations have you got talking about planting date, planting rate and that sort of thing?

We’re going to stay, we’ve thought about a lot of different types of configurations we should be moving to. We’ve listened to people, we’re going to stay exactly where we are and that’s the double skip configuration. I’d rather get six plants actually established per metre.

If anybody can guarantee a six evenly established plants across the metre do that, but we’re going to go back to probably still planting that 10 to 12 seeds per metre to get that sort of 7 to 10 plants up.

And planting date?

Planting date, it’s an awkward one for Dryland cotton and anyone who has grown a bit of Dryland cotton knows you always get that rain sort of late August early September and the moisture holds for you right through to sort of the end of September the heat starts moving in and the moisture starts getting away from you, so it tends to push you where traditional cotton to go in earlier than what you’d probably like to and we have done that over the last two seasons and of course after finished planting we’ve had rain and get that cold snap.

With the Bollgard that’s one of the main reasons why we’re going all Bollgard that we’ll feel a lot more comfortable away from that second rain that sort of late September, early October rain more so than that late August early September rain to plant on.

Rob Cook

After 20 years of growing Dryland cotton, predominately conventional last year you had 80 or 90% of your area to Bollgard. How different was it from a management point of view?

Well John, heliothis weren’t a problem at all in the Bollgard. We had no worries about having to spray if the paddocks were wet and that’s been a great load off our mind when insects are heavy and the paddocks wet.

From what you saw last seasons Rob, do you feel that Bollgard has a similar yield potential than quality range as conventional?

Yes John obviously all seasons are different but across the board the Bollgard yielded on a par with the conventional. The grades were 21 to 36/37 and the micronaires ranged from between somewhere between 4.1 and 4.5.

On a couple of management issues Rob I’ll just get your comments on looking to the future of Bollgard management. As far as early sucking pest control goes, what do you think about that with Bollgard crops?

How soon to come in with the first sprays for Mirids and sucking insects would be one thing I’d be thinking about; whether we could handle it a little more damage in the early period and maybe raise the threshold a little.

And what about pix? You’ve always used a bit of pix in conventional what do you think about it with Bollgard?

We’ve always used pix on the conventional but depending on the season whether it’s got a high profile in moisture and whether it’s going to be a problem the rate growth and I feel the same should be done with Bollgard depending again on your moisture levels and how it’s growing.

And then finally you’ve always grown Dryland cotton in double skip. How important do you think this aspect will be with Bollgard particularly in relation to fibre quality?

Again John we’ve always grown double skip and we’ve very rarely had a quality problem with the cotton and with the Bollgard obviously putting on a large amount of fruit in the early stages I think it’ll be critical that we consider that skip row maybe the way to go to be sure of your quality in your cotton.

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