PhytoGen^® cottonseed won first place in both the 2023 Mississippi State University (MSU) Cotton Official Variety Trials (OVTs) and the 2023 MSU On-Farm Cotton Variety Trials, proving once again that PhytoGen offers high-yield potential and excellent yield protection with its latest varieties for Midsouth producers.

In the 2023 MSU Cotton OVTs, PhytoGen^® brand PHY 411 W3FE was the highest yielder across seven locations, averaging 1,764 lb./A. PHY 411 W3FE outyielded competitive varieties DP 2127 B3XF and NG 4190 B3XF by 90 lb./A and 115 lb./A, respectively. Three of the five top-yielding varieties came from PhytoGen, including PhytoGen^® brand PHY 415 W3FE.¹

Shawn Butler, Ph.D., is the PhytoGen cotton development specialist in Mississippi, where he reviews trial data and helps cotton producers select the best varieties for their acres. Butler says PhytoGen^® brand varieties have been posting big results in recent university and Extension trials with several varieties, showing the breadth and depth of the PhytoGen portfolio.

“When you look at the Mississippi OVTs, not only did we have the winning variety with PHY 411 W3FE but we also had more varieties at the top than any other cottonseed brand,” Butler said. “We had seven varieties in the top 12, and our competitors only had one variety each. That says a lot about the consistency of PhytoGen brand varieties.”

Butler says PhytoGen brand varieties have been demonstrating consistent performance across the portfolio in these trials. That’s especially true when you compare PhytoGen^® W3FE varieties, which include WideStrike^® 3 Insect Protection and the Enlist^® cotton trait, with competitive varieties with the B3XF trait platform.

Over the last four years, PhytoGen W3FE varieties have averaged 100 lb./A over B3XF in the MSU OVTs. In the 2023 MSU OVTs, PhytoGen W3FE varieties averaged 1,469 lb./A while new B3TXF varieties averaged 1,396 lb./A.¹

MSU Extension also conducts annual on-farm trials, working with producers to plant and manage varieties according to their own management practices. In the 2023 MSU On-Farm Cotton Variety Trials, PHY 411 W3FE was the No. 1 yielder across all 16 locations. In the Mississippi Delta locations, PHY 411 W3FE yielded 1,726 lb./A and beat the next-best variety, DP 2127 B3XF, by 298 lb./A.²

This high-end performance in on-farm variety trials is nothing new for Mississippi producers. PhytoGen had the No. 1 variety in the MSU on-farm trials three years in a row from 2019 to 2021. In addition to PHY 411 W3FE, big winners in those years included well-known varieties, such as PhytoGen^® brand PHY 443 W3FE.

“The data tells a very compelling story — and the headline is this: PhytoGen brings consistent high yield potential to cotton farmers,” Butler said. “Our customers are saying the same thing. The word is out, and we’ve very excited going into 2024 as more and more producers plant PhytoGen varieties.”

Want to discover more about trial-winning PhytoGen brand varieties? Find out what they can bring to your farmgate next season and those to come by visiting PhytoGenCottonseed.com.

¹ 2023 Mississippi State University Cotton Official Variety Trials, preliminary data. https://www.mafes.msstate.edu/variety-trials/docs/cotton/2023-cotton.pdf  

² Pieralisi, B. K., W. J. Rutland, and B. J. Norris. 2023. 2023 Mississippi State University On-Farm Cotton Variety Trials. https://www.mississippi-crops.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-On_Farm_Cotton-Book.pdf

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