North Carolina State University has released the yield results from the 2018 On-Farm Cotton Variety Evaluation program.

“Although 2018 brought its share of challenges, it was a decent year for cotton in some areas, while catastrophic in others, due to tropical storms,” N.C. State cotton agronomist Dr. Guy Collins noted in releasing the results.

For more on the results, click here.

The  on-farm program consists of the most widely adapted and best-fit varieties for North Carolina  cotton growers as determined by leading seed companies. Here are some key comments from Dr. Collins:

“It is always advised that variety decisions be based on multi-environment and multi-year replicated data in order to identify varieties with a high degree of stability (strong performance across a wide range of environmental conditions and years). As a standard practice, it is always wise for growers to choose several varieties and position those varieties in environments where they are likely to perform competitively.”

“It is also advised that growers observe data from both the on-farm program and NCSU Official Variety Trials (OVT) which will be available very soon. Both programs serve as platforms for effective evaluation of variety performance, but are different in several regards.”

“One of the primary strengths of the on-farm program is the vast number of environments that are effectively captured in a given season. However, OVT can accommodate many more varieties than we can effectively evaluate in an on-farm trial, and many of our seed companies have several competitive varieties available for NC producers, many of which are evaluated in OVT.”

“Together, the on-farm and OVT programs collectively offer growers a complete platform for making variety decisions.”

“Within the fourth year of this program alone, the on-farm program again has clearly demonstrated that variety selection is one of the most important decisions a grower can make that will significantly impact their profitability in a given year.”

“Depending on the degree of variety selection error, the 2018 on-farm trials clearly illustrated that producers could lose an average of $118 to $261 per acre due to improper variety selection, with a potential statewide economic value of $47,200,000 to $104,400,000!! Keep in mind, that these figures are based on performance of the best varieties from each brand, therefore a producer could do much worse than this by choosing a less competitive variety.”

Source: NC State Cotton Team