NEW PLANT GROWTH REGULATOR

Keith Edmisten, Alan York and Randy Wells

There is a new formulation of mepiquat chloride available from MicroFlo. Mep + contains mepiquat chloride and Bacillus cereus. At this point we have looked at Mep + for two years at three locations per year. Note that in Table 1, Mep+ appears to affect cotton very similarly to Pix. Unfortunately we have only looked at Mep+ in a low rate multiple system and have not looked at it in an early bloom or modified early bloom situation. Based on our limited experience it appears that a given rate of Mep+ will do about the same thing as an equivalent rate of Pix or generic mepiquat chloride. Mep+ reduced the number of nodes produced similarly to Pix. We suggest that growers who are interested in Mep+ try it on a limited acreage and try to do some side by side comparisons to Pix or a generic Mepiquat chloride.

 Table 1. Yield and height of cotton treated with low rate multiple applications of Pix and Mep+.

* averaged over three locations in 1996 and 1997

** averaged over 2 locations in 1996 and 1997 (one location was left out each year because of smaller plot size and hand harvests were used as opposed to machine harvests used at the location included in this column).

*** plant height for one location in 1996.