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June 18, 2001Growers urged to destroy unharvestable cotton
(ABILENE) — Recent storms destroyed or severely damaged thousands of acres of cotton in the South Plains area. The loss was devastating, but the cost to area cotton growers could be compounded if growers do not take care to destroy any remaining plants in these fields.
The Southern High Plains/Caprock zone recently joined the boll weevil eradication effort in Texas, and the program will be in full swing beginning about Sept. 1. Cultural controls are an important part of the eradication effort, said Charles Allen, program director for the Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation.
One of the most important of these controls is the elimination of a food source and a place for boll weevils to reproduce, Allen said, and the damaged cotton remaining in storm-affected fields can be a good place for weevils to find both.
“This will allow needless increases in the boll weevil population and needlessly increased costs to growers in the eradication program,” he said.
Allen urged growers to destroy cotton in fields that will not be brought to harvest as soon as possible. He also said growers should be careful to destroy any cotton remaining in a field that will be replanted in another crop.
“Weevils will find the cotton left in these fields and use it for feeding and reproduction,” he said.
These fields will require treatment when the program begins eradication activities in the fall, Allen said.
Growers who destroy the cotton in their fields before fall diapause treatments begin will not have to pay an assessment, Allen said. Fields that still have cotton plants in them when fall eradication activities begin will be assessed.
