HEAT UNIT ACCUMULATION UPDATE

As of August 29, 2002:

Heat Unit accumulations have not reached the target level of 850 units past cutout (ideal for harvest aid application) and will probably not until late September. (Dryland fields have certainly reached maturity ahead of schedule.) Projected calendar days and heat unit accumulations indicate around the 20th of September as the ideal time for harvest-aid applications to begin in irrigated cotton. Key word, of course, is projected. Just like insect scouting, each field is an individual.

Rainfall occurring early the 29th has put a exclamation mark on this cotton crop. Those fields that were being watered for the "last time" can certainly be terminated a bit earlier. Rainfall amounts were fairly general over the two-county area ;
Barwise 1.5" Floydada 1.5" Dougherty 1.0"
Lorenzo 1.0" Cone 1.5" Crosbyton 1.4"
Robertson 0.8" Caprock Gin 1.5"

Insect problems with bollworms in cotton are over in Crosby and Floyd Counties with only a few wide-spread program fields still containing eggs. Populations of bollworms remain well below threshold levels, but, lush fields need to be monitored for at least one to two more weeks to ensure no pest problems occur.
Beet armyworm flare-ups continue to be reported in program cotton but only one program field has had to be treated to date.
Aphid problems in program cotton fields no longer exist and this welcome rain should have cleaned-up the honey dew symptoms that remained.

Bollworm, budworm and beet armyworm moth catches as of August 28th are:

All moth numbers are down from last week, most by half, except for budworm which is a later season pest, historically. With this latest rainfall event, the mosquito population should explode again after the hot and dry spell had just about starved them out. It will behoove everyone to keep standing pools of water to a minimum to help reduce mosquito survival.
West Nile Virus (WNV) is solely dependant upon this vector as a transmitter of disease.

REPEAT: Information regarding WNV may be researched on the TDH website at tdh.state.tx.us or by calling your local Texas Department of Health office. Another site is http://eit.tamu.edu/westnile/ which is a streamed video conference conducted by Texas Cooperative Extension. Each county extension office is supposed to receive a videotape entitled "West Nile Virus : A Survival Guide" in the very near future.

Boll weevil trapping data (Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation) has remained on track in both the Southern Plains/Caprock and in the Northern Plains Zones with 0.002 and 0.003 weevils/trap, respectively. In 2001 on this same date, there were 5.138 and 1.707 weevils captured per trap in these two zones, respectively. This is a highly significant reduction in numbers in only one year. The Southern High Plains/Caprock and the Northern High Plains Zones have treated approximately 305,730 and 150,000 acres of cotton, respectively, for boll weevils as of August 25, 2002.

Upcoming meeting of interest:

September 10 - Floyd County Ag. Tour - Call Donna at (806)983-4912 for more information.

Next week's newsletter will be the last of the regularly scheduled mail-outs and e-mails for crop year 2002.

Steve Davis
Extension Agent-IPM
Crosby/Floyd Counties

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