Lubbock, Texas
April 14, 2005
Farming is a question-and-answer
game. When to plant? When to spray? Where did these weeds come
from? How do I kill them? What is that critter crawling around
on my cotton?
Find the right information, and an answer may present itself.
That's the intent of a series of crop production guides created
by Texas Cooperative Extension specialists and Texas
Agricultural Experiment Station research scientists housed at
the Texas A&M University
System Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Lubbock.
Each guide addresses a specific topic/problem and offers advice
and options producers can use to formulate their own solution.
The production guides grew out of the widely popular Focus on
Entomology newsletter published by Jim Leser, Extension cotton
entomologist at Lubbock. The newsletter is published
electronically during the June through September High Plains
cotton growing season.
"Focus on Entomology addresses growing conditions and problems
that producers encounter in cotton and other crops," Leser said.
"But it goes beyond entomology. It and the production guides
discuss topics other than bugs."
For example, there are production guides written specifically
for insects and plant disease, irrigation, weed control and
herbicide options, soil fertility, harvest management, and
variety and hybrid selection for upland cotton, grain sorghum,
peanuts and corn. Color photographs illustrate key points in
each guide.
There more than 16 production guides currently available at the
newsletter's electronic home on the World Wide Web:
http://lubbock.tamu.edu/focus .
"We plan on completing 16 more guides before the end of this
year," Leser said. "You can view the guides electronically on a
computer, or download and print them as a user-friendly PDF
(portable document) file.
"If resources become available, we plan to print and package the
full series of cotton production guides in a three-ring binder." |