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Cotton Seed Distributors Web on Wednesday: Cotton picking in central and southern New South Wales
Australia
April 27, 2005

Craig McDonald, Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) Extension and Development Agronomist at Narromine, (pictured, with Neil Mill in a crop of Sicot 71BR) gives an update on how picking is progressing in central and southern NSW.

Picking has been underway in the Macquarie since early April. There was a little bit of dryland picked north of Warren prior to that but generally the irrigated crops started in early April. Early indications are very good as far as yield potential goes.  It is quite encouraging to see the number of modules lined up at the end of fields and the comments from growers as to how many modules have come off particular fields and they have never had so many modules coming off fields which is good.

Pictured: Craig McDonald and Neil Mill in a crop of Sicot 71BR

In the Lachlan Valley, picking will start there fully next week. There has been one farm picking for a little while. Early indications are reasonably good so far. There is modules going into the gin there and the gin should start, I think they are going to be starting this week and then they will be ginning full time after that.

Yes, very good indications as to early yields. A lot of crops will go 4 bales plus but when we get some ginned we can work out turnouts and then get it classed looking at fibre quality and that sort of thing.

So far mainly Bollgard® II crops they have come in a little bit earlier than the conventional crops. The conventional crops do look extremely good. They have certainly benefited from late season lighter insect heliothis pressure late season so they have really compensated for missing some of that fruit mid season when the pressure was high. Some areas have reported fairly heavy egg pressure during the season up to 200 plus eggs per metre.

The Bollgard stood up to it fairly well. There was a fair bit of spraying on the conventional to keep control of it so there has been some fruit loss there but certainly the warm end of the season has really helped that and they got a lot of top crop on the conventional crops so they will come in very well but early days as yet on those.

A major contributor to the good yields and the good seasons here in the Macquarie and Lachlan has been a fairly mild season. We had a very good start, quite warm conditions, some people were able to plant in the 2nd last week in September. The crops got off to a reasonable start with a couple of cold snaps but generally got through pretty well and its been a very mild season.

We haven’t really had the extremes of heat as compared to the last two seasons which really does help as far as cotton development without having those extremes. Any crops that have been fully watered, water has been fairly limited in Central and Southern New South Wales unfortunately but any crops that have had full water and have been watered on time have done extremely well. There was one crop north of Warren planted on double skip, it received a watering up and then one in-crop watering and its done remarkably well.

It was planted on double skip which certainly did help but virtually no in season rain it looks like doing possibly a bale and half across the whole field so it may be an opportunity to re-look at the water situation in limited water to sort of plant more area and stretch that water a little bit further but the fully irrigated crops are going to do extremely well.

Prospects for next season: with Burrendong Dam at 15% at the moment the prospects aren’t very good. Wiangla Dam is also about 9%.

The forecasts for winter rainfall are pretty good – 70% chance of better than average rainfall so based on that prediction the prospects have to be improving a little bit for next season and as we see an increase in price we should se pretty well full production in this area given a reasonable allocation of water.

Just to sum up, yes very good yields so far, indicative yields, quality certainly looks very good, looks good in the fields, the cotton is a brilliant white colour, ideal weather for picking so far. We are probably about 30% maybe 35% through in the Macquarie Valley, the Lachlan and further South Murrumbidgee Valleys are very early days yet.

There has been quite a bit of 2-4D damage in the Macquarie Valley particularly that has severely affected yields unfortunately across some fairly big areas so that has been a down side this season, massive amounts of 2-4D or phenoxy drift so that has put a dampener on what has generally been a very good season finishing up quite well in a very small cotton area unfortunately but certainly looking forward to a bigger and better season next year.

Further Information: Craig McDonald

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