Research Update (March 3, 2025)
Diligence Technologies Inc., West Tennessee
EVENTS FROM THE PAST MONTH:
It was great to catch up with some of our friends from west Tennessee at the West Tennessee Grain Conference, Cotton Focus, and the Mid-south Farm and Gin Show. These events tend to draw folks from our local area and are a great opportunity to discuss what might be on the horizon for the coming season.
Hopefully, we will be off the road for a while as we turn our attention to wheat, burndown trials, and spring planting in March.
CROPPING SEASONS:
Things in the field are still slow as we continue to wait for signs of spring weather. It should not be long before we are doing wheat maintenance and spraying burndown trials. Let us know if you have trials we can slide into this March window before we begin spring planting in April.
GREENHOUSE ACTIVITIES:
We continue to initiate new greenhouse trials in crops such as corn, cotton, hops, mint, and rice. We still have time to slide in some late trials before we get fully involved in planting this spring. Let us know if you have something in mind.
Also be aware that we have corn, cotton, soybean, and several weed species growing in the greenhouse continuously throughout the winter. If you need a postemergence evaluation on any of these, there is a good chance we can initiate the trial in short order.
UPCOMING TRIAL REMINDERS:
COTTON (YIELDED & INSECTICIDE TRIALS)
We generally target early May for planting yielded cotton trials. Being on the northern end of the cotton growing region, we make every effort to plant cotton as soon as the weather allows to make sure the cotton has time to reach maturity in the fall. Insect trials that are not being taken to yield are generally planted after that.
We are now planting three different cotton technologies in the field depending on the objective of the trial. A cotton variety that includes the ThryvOn technology is planted in trials that are not targeting insect control to minimize the impact of insects. These would include trials on fertilizers, biostimulants, PGRs, and microbials. A cotton variety containing only the Bt technology is used in trials targeting thrips and plant bugs. Finally, a non-Bt cotton variety is used where worm pests are the target insects.
Please contact us as soon as possible if you require cotton variety outside of our normal plantings or if you require a special site type (no-till, low fertility, etc.) so that we can make arrangements prior to cotton planting season. It is much easier to line those things up now.
CORN FUNGICIDE TRIALS
The logistics of our corn foliar disease trials differ from most of the other corn trials we conduct. While we try to plant other yielded corn trials in April, we generally wait until mid-May to plant corn foliar disease trials. On average, we have increased disease pressure with this later timing. Also, we do most of our foliar disease work at the location in Jackson. The Jackson location historically has much better disease pressure than the site in Memphis.
Our target disease for most of our foliar corn trials is gray leaf spot. We will occasionally get other diseases in the mix such as southern rust, but these diseases do not occur as consistently as gray leaf spot. To enhance the presence of foliar diseases, we plant corn hybrids that are not highly resistant to foliar diseases.
If you are looking for a foliar disease other than gray leaf spot or need to work with a specific corn hybrid, please let us know as soon as possible. We will need to make different arrangements for those trials.
YIELDED SOYBEANS
We normally begin planting yielded soybean trials (fertilizers, biostimulants, microbials) as soon as we finish with cotton planting. Soybeans require less time to mature than cotton and can be planted a bit later in the season. We normally grow mid to late maturity group 4 soybeans but we do have some flexibility. Our soybean varieties are typically resistant to both glyphosate and glufosinate to aid plot maintenance.
If you are looking for a special cropping situation (low fertility, etc.) or a special soybean variety, please let us know as early as possible so we can make arrangements.
SOYBEAN FUNGICIDE TRIALS
Much like our corn fungicide trials, we plant our soybean fungicide trials later in the season (often late May or early June) to increase disease pressure. Our most consistent soybean disease and the one we usually target is frogeye leaf spot. We place these trials in Jackson since disease pressure there is almost always heavier than at the Memphis location. They are generally conducted in a no-till situation which also tends to enhance disease development. Finally, we use soybean varieties that are known to be susceptible to frogeye leaf spot to get the best evaluations possible.
We are blessed in that we can typically get several good visual observations of fungicide activity in the soybeans. Most of these trials are taken to yield and the degree of yield separation varies with the timing of disease development and frogeye leaf spot severity in a given season. The earlier the disease arrives and the greater the disease intensity, the more likely we are to see yield separation between treatments.
WEATHER INFO:
We had a few nice days in early February that gave us hope only to have that hope crushed as typical cold and wet conditions returned to west Tennessee. However, we are beginning to see signs that spring is coming. In late February and early March, we typically get enough nice days scattered in to let us know we are getting to the end of winter. If we can get the ground to dry out a bit, we will be working on wheat and burndown trials.
PEST INFO:
Discussions of pest pressure are limited this time of year. We have the normal winter annual weeds covering most of our fields and maybe a few aphids hiding in the wheat. Otherwise, most of the pests we encounter in February are the ones we cultivate in the greenhouse in order to run trials.
We are looking forward to another great year at Diligence Technologies. We look forward to seeing you in the greenhouse soon and out in the field later on. Please let us know what we can do to assist with your research needs this season.
Tim, Jackson, Jake, Will, Jim, & JT
Proverbs 12:24
The hand of the diligent shall bear rule, but the slothful shall be put to forced labor.
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