DROUGHT STRESSED COTTON

Keith Edmisten

Extension Cotton Specialist

Many areas of the state are in serious trouble due to drought. There is a publication on the web concerning drought and cotton at http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/disaster/drought/dro-17.html .

I have had several folks who are irrigating cotton for the first time and want to know how much water cotton needs. The publication mentioned above has irrigation schedules for cotton if you are interested.

Folks always want to do something to help cotton under stress. Drought stressed cotton needs one thing WATER. There are no magic growth regulators that can help drought stressed cotton unless you can put them out with about an inch of water per acre. Don't spend money on foliar fertilizers or growth regulators, you don't make anymore cotton you just spend money! Remember that drought stressed cotton does not take up foliar fertilizer well at all.

Some areas got some rain recently and are wondering if they should go out and start applying Pix. There are some areas that have not been under drought stress that need Pix. I would not apply Pix to drought stressed cotton that recently received a rain. It will take more than one rain to make this cotton get rank. This is especially true for most cotton that is blooming and has some boll load. The drought stressed cotton will use this rain to fill out the existing bolls on the plant before it tries to take off again. By then we may be dry again. I would just keep a close eye on the internode length below the third and fourth leaf from the top.

In the drought areas that got rain recently expect a high amount of shedding squares and small bolls. The plant already decided what to shed and now the rain will help the plant to complete the shedding process. You should be able to see how much fruit will shed by gently thumping the fruit about 5 days after the rain. We only have 1 to 2 weeks to set squares that will have a reasonable chance to produce a harvestable boll. If the rest of the season is "normal" we a square set after about July 23 in the northern part of the state will not produce a harvestable boll. How quickly the plant begins to put on new squares depends on maturity of the variety and boll load. Generally fuller season varieties will begin to set new squares faster than early varieties once a drought is relieved primarily because they do not usually have as high a boll load because they start to fruit later than early varieties.