How to choose the right cotton variety for 2024

Selecting the right cotton variety (or varieties) is one of the most important decisions a grower makes every year. In fact, it's one of the few decisions a grower can make that they directly control, so it is extremely important to choose correctly. So with that being said, let's talk about a few things to keep in mind as we get ready to pick our varieties to plant in 2024.

📸: BASF internal photograph/Featuring a high-yielding cotton field.

1. Yield Potential

This one is pretty obvious, but we always want to plant varieties with the highest yield potential for our area. There are several resources to use for this, including everything from University on-farm trial data and Stoneville Agronomic Performance Trial data to personal evaluation and word of mouth from neighbors. It's always smart to use multiple pieces of information and, if possible, utilize more than one year of data to make your decision. An example of some yield data from UGA can be found here:

• 2023 University of Georgia On-Farm Cotton Variety Trial Results

2. Maturity

No matter where you farm in the cotton belt, plant maturity is very important. Some growers want early-maturing varieties, and others want full-season varieties. Regardless of your preference, it is important to understand the maturity of the variety you plant. In my area (Georgia and South Carolina), we tend to push towards more full-season varieties. However, I always recommend planting some early, mid, or late-maturing varieties as well. By planting a range of maturities, you're mitigating risk. We don't know when the ideal window will be for rainfall in the southeast, so if we have a wide range of maturity, we'll spread out our chances of catching some ideal rains during flowering and boll development and improve our chances at a strong crop.

3. Trait Package

There are a lot of things we could talk about here, but we'll keep it short. What herbicide package do you want? Do you need resistance to bacterial blight? Nematode resistance? Verticillium wilt tolerance? Nobody knows your farm better than you, so deciding what traits fit your farm is a key decision. For my area, we hear more and more about issues with root-knot nematodes, so I'm working with guys on placing RKN-resistant varieties on their farm this spring.

NEW FOR 2024:

Stoneville® Seed has released a new cotton variety for 2024, ST 6000AXTP. If you'd like to learn more, here's an article with more information:

• Introducing: ST 6000AXTP in the Southeast

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