Location: Crop Production Systems Research
Project Number: 6066-22000-095-000-D
Project Type: In-House Appropriated
Start Date: Apr 1, 2024
End Date: Mar 31, 2025
Objective:
1. Optimize early soybean production system and associated pest management
strategies for the Mid-Southern United States.
2. Develop innovative cotton management approaches that will optimize physiological responses of the cotton plant to environmental factors so that it can make the most efficient use of production inputs to improve lint yield and fiber quality.
2.1. Quantify yield, fiber quality, growth and development for varying cotton plant population densities with adequate and less-than-adequate N fertilization, and under irrigated or dryland production.
2.2. Quantify yield, fiber quality, growth and development for varying cotton
varieties grown in both twin-row and single-row planting patterns under irrigated or dryland production.
2.3. Assess benefits of transgenic and non-transgenic cotton-soybean rotation
systems on soil properties, weeds, yield, and seed and fiber quality in the
Mississippi Delta.
3. Assess the benefits of new drought tolerant, multiple herbicideresistant, and
insect-resistant (stacked gene traits) in current or new production systems.
4. Assess impacts of transgene and glyphosate applications on soil microbial
communities, plant-microbe interactions, as well as plant health and productivity in corn and soybean.
5. Identify new and/or alternative crops for the Mid-South, determine their
potential, and develop management strategies for integration and production.
Approach:
The purpose of this project is to develop productive, profitable, and sustainable
crop production systems for three of the mid-southern major row crops (soybean,
cotton, and corn) that increase yield, improve quality, and reduce production costs.
Over the next five years, we will conduct customer-driven basic and applied
research aimed at improving regional-specific cropping systems that are profitable, conserve natural resources, provide effective pest control, and make efficient use of production inputs. The specific production practices to be researched in these 3 major crops include row patterns and row spacing, seeding rates, new genotypes, nutrient management, crop rotations, irrigation, planting dates, and transgene and glyphosate effects on plant health and productivity of corn and soybean. In addition, alternative crops that could be produced using existing equipment and fit into rotation systems will be researched.
