Plant Growth Regulators in Mississippi Cotton Mississippi cotton growers often experience challenges during the early season. Farmers deal with weather extremes, including excessively cool or warm weather, excessive rainfall and flooding, and drought in some years. These conditions could plague cotton from late April through mid-June. As a result, cotton often suffers root-development issues, reduced plant stature, and delayed maturity. These setbacks complicate management strategies as the crop advances into the reproductive stages.

Late Planted Cotton and Plant Growth Regulators (PGR’s) We have a lot of cotton out there that was planted late because of replanting poor stands. So we often get the question about how to manage these acres with PGR’s. With late planted cotton the length of time the cotton blooms is the main thing that changes. The later you plant the shorter the window. So anything that is planted late needs to be pushed to retain all the bolls that it tries to set. This principal applies to PGR applications as well as insect management. Keep in mind that dry land acres in dry years like we are experiencing may not need a PGR.

Understanding cotton PGR rainfastness Article talks about the rainfastness of cotton plant growth regulators, or PGRs, during a wet, hot cotton growing season.

Walking a Fine Line with PGRs When farmers first started looking at variable rate applications of plant growth regulators, the idea was to vary the rates depending on the crop conditions they encountered as they went across the field. Some growers are doing that, but others are trying – or perhaps should be trying – a different approach: slowly increasing the amounts of PGRs from one application to the next to reflect stronger varieties, higher nitrogen levels, and environmental conditions.