cotton - Greenmount Press

District Reports…
Central Queensland
The season is well underway in Central Queensland with about
16,000 hectares of irrigated cotton planted around Emerald and
5000 hectares in the Callide/Dawson region. There was little need
for replanting with plant stands generally good. Crops that were
planted both early or later in the window around Emerald seemed
to avoid the cold shock days and are growing well. Plants that
emerged during the cooler period were a bit slower but are now
recovering. There have been a few fields in the Callide/Dawson
area with stunted, slow to develop patches and investigations as
to the cause of these patches are continuing.
Most farms have had the first irrigation with some starting on
the second one. Early crops are starting to flower with all crops well
into the squaring stage. There was some cool, cloudy weather with
early Helicoverpa pressure that caused the early crops to shed some
squares, but they seem to have recovered well. Other pest pressure
has been low in the area with a few mirids and thrips around.
Mealybug numbers have been zero to low in fields, around both
Emerald and Theodore, but there are still significant numbers on
ratoons and volunteers providing a future risk.
In-field weed control has been reasonably good this year, but
with the unusually wet winter, control of ratoons and volunteers
has been a big challenge and are an issue in some crops,
although in-crop cultivations have helped.
Gail Spargo
November 30, 2012
St George and Dirranbandi
Well it would seem incredible that only nine months after
the largest flood in the recorded history of St George we need
another flood or at least a flow in the river to ensure that the
channel farms around St George will have enough water to finish
the season.
Although we had more than 400,000 megs a day going past
during the flood the fact that Beardmore Dam is but a small
puddle of 81,000 megs seems to leave these growers in this
predicament again. Considering that the last decent rain was
back in May we are either in for a wet summer or another bloody
long drought.
River farms at St George and Dirranbandi at this stage have
enough water to ensure that they will finish crops off and have
some water left over for next season as well. Unfortunately
a heat wave during the past two weeks with temperatures
averaging 41–44ºC has certainly increased the evaporation rates.
And due to the dry lower soil profile, irrigations have tended to
average 1–1.2 megs per hectare instead of the normal 0.8–1
megs.
But on the upside, fields in both areas look great due to the
dry weather which has given growers the ability to control the
crops’ growth more easily compared to the past two seasons –
which saw crops waterlogged for the first two to three months.
Growers tended to hold off planting till the beginning or
middle of October this year, which has made a real difference to
the start the crops have had. Fields planted during the first week
of October are now flowering and are on track at this stage. Day
Degrees so far are just above the long term average.
Perhaps due to the heat wave conditions and the extremely
high numbers of beneficials throughout the crops, pest numbers
are very low at this stage. The only concern is that with the heat
wave we will most likely see a flare up of whitefly later in the
season though this will allow a few growers to finally get rid of
their Admiral stocks.
As we can have a flow in the river (half the size of last years
will be fine) we should be in for a good season as long as the
dollar drops back to say 65 cents and the bale price rises to $500.
Dallas King
December 10, 2012
Border Rivers
The planting and establishment process this year has been
a very difficult and unforgiving one courtesy of a dry winter,
minimal rainfall in October and predominantly back-to-back
cotton.
Most planting was starting to get under way in the first week
of October but a cool and wet period around October 12 put a
halt to proceedings and the bulk of the district was planted in the
two-week period after this. Weather conditions during this time
were generally drying – making conditions extremely unforgiving.
While replant levels were generally lower than the past couple of
seasons, the number of crops requiring a flush two to four weeks
from planting was more common.
Temperature-wise, the season has been slightly warmer than
usual with day degrees about 10 per cent higher than average
for October – November and cold shocks (13) and days over
36°C (5) both above average also. More telling is the rainfall total
of 34 mm for this two-month period which included only one
individual fall more than 10 mm. There have been some areas
around the district that have been fortunate enough to get some
storm rain but it has been patchy.
Early indications on planted areas are around 45,000 hectares
and 20,000 of irrigated cotton in the Macintyre and Mungindi
respectively. This is a 20–25 percent reduction from last season.
District Reports
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December 2012–January 2013 The Australian Cottongrower — 61