Every year in North Carolina brings its share of challenges, and 2024 was no different. Beginning in late April through early May, planting conditions were nearly ideal in terms of temperatures, but we went into the planting season somewhat dry, which became more pronounced each day. Rains returned during mid May to allow for emergence and revived planted for the remainder of the crop. For the most part, good stands were achieved across the state, with very few fields needing replanting. Most cotton was more or less early planted this year, with only a relatively small fraction planted in late May and hardly any planted in early June.

June was rather rough on the NC cotton crop in 2024. Extremely hot and dry conditions persisted throughout June, which reduced our maximum yield potential, despite many growers achieving good yields. As of late June or early July, once blooming began, our crop went straight into cutout due to drought, however, the lack of a heavy boll load during this time allowed for recovery once rains resumed. During this time, our crop was right on the cusp of catastrophic failure, similar to what corn experienced in many parts of the state. Timely and sufficient rains came during early July and was badly needed. Our crop was in a vunerable position at this point in time, as it needed rain quickly and also needed continuity of moisture (more rain occuring more frequently than normal) in order to stay in a suspended cutout and develop a sufficient boll load. Most areas received just that, while in some other areas, those first rains were delayed and this could be observed in yields. For the majority of our cotton acres, rains were frequent and continued throughout most of August. We observed one of the best recoveries of a drought-stricken cotton crop, and our yields reflect that for the most part.

September brought some cloudy weather and rainy/wet conditions. This wasn’t ideal, but it also wasnt rare for us in NC. Unfortunately, some yield was lost due to hardlock during this time, however it could have been quite a bit worse than what we experienced. September and early October was noticeably and abnormally cool, resulting in slower than normal maturity of the top crop and lower micronaire in many cases. As such, defoliation and harvest was slightly delayed. October brought dry weather, which was a blessing for preserving yields and harvesting the crop in a timely fashion. Aside from a few areas experiencing a light frost at around October 17th, the latter half of October and early November was rather warm, and the next widespread frost did not occur until late November.

Despite the June drought, and wetter than ideal September, yields remained strong across the state with 1100 to 1200 lb cotton being harvesting in most regions. A few areas yielded less, especially if rains were slightly delayed in early July. Only a handful of fields reached or surpassed 3 bales. Although the current economic environment left many growers somewhat disappointed in the 2024 crop, we must remember how well this crop recovered despite the June drought compared to other crops that were near a total loss in many places. We thankfully made respectable yields across the majority of our acres, which is a testament to the varieties we now commonly grow.

Thanks to our stellar cooperating growers and county agents, we were able to successfully complete another year of the North Carolina On-Farm Cotton Variety Evaluation Program. Additionally, this program was once again a huge success in 2024, thanks to the substantial support from the NC Cotton Producers Association, N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, NC State University, our Seed Companies, and Cotton Incorporated. The support and contributions of all involved are much appreciated, and will have significant impact on our growers’ bottom line as we look forward to a hopefully another prosperous 2025 season.

As in years past, this on-farm program consisted of the most widely-adapted and best-fit varieties for North Carolina cotton growers as determined by our leading seed companies. It is always advised that variety decisions be based on multi-environment and multi-year replicated data in order to identify varieties with a high degree of stability (strong performance across a wide range of environmental conditions and years). As a standard practice, it is always wise for growers to choose several varieties and position those varieties in environments where they are likely to perform competitively. It is also advised that growers observe data from both the on-farm program and NC State University Official Variety Trials (OVT) which will be available very soon. Both programs serve as platforms for effective evaluation of variety performance but are different in several regards. One of the primary strengths of the on-farm program is the vast number of environments that are effectively captured in a given season. However, OVT can accommodate many more varieties than we can effectively evaluate in an on-farm trial, and many of our seed companies have several competitive varieties (including brand new, recently released varieties) available for North Carolina producers, many of which are evaluated in OVT. Together, the On-Farm and OVT programs collectively offer growers a complete platform for making variety decisions.

Within the 10th year of this program alone, which is difficult to fathom for me, the on-farm program again has clearly demonstrated that variety selection is one of the most important decisions a grower can make that will significantly impact their profitability in a given year. Depending on the degree of variety selection error, the 2024 on-farm trials clearly illustrated that producers could lose an average of $122 per acre due to improper variety selection alone!! Keep in mind, that these figures are based on performance of the best varieties from each brand, therefore a producer could do much worse than this by potentially choosing a less competitive variety.

Variety performance information will be discussed in much greater detail during the upcoming winter meetings (look for meeting dates/locations for your county at your local N.C. Cooperative Extension office or on the NC State University Cotton Portal under Events (meeting dates and locations are already listed). Additionally, your local county agent is an excellent resource for variety selection, so please contact them for your local trial results and they will be happy to share those results with you. Additionally, the NC Cotton Variety Performance Calculator, launched in early 2016, is an excellent resource for growers to use to make customized variety comparisons based on geographical region, yield environment, years or multi-years, and trial type. The calculator will soon be updated with lint yields and fiber quality for the 2024 On-Farm trials, with OVT data soon to follow.

The slides below offers a very general summary of variety performance across the state. Variety performance data will be dissected in much greater detail during the upcoming winter meetings. This year, as always, growers should focus more on factors such as stability characteristics, versus focusing on the overall variety ranking of single-year data alone. There are several ways to approach and observe 2024 variety performance data, and this will be explained thoroughly during meeting season. During 2024, variety performance varied rather wildly from trial to trial, and there were noticeable differences in variety performance even within regions of the state. Therefore, growers might want to hold off on making any definite variety decisions until these various approaches can be discussed thoroughly during winter meetings. However, the slides below can be used as a very general summary for now.

2024 NC On-Farm Cotton Variety Trials Yield Stability 11-21-2024

In these slides, varieties are ranked in descending order according to average yield across all trials in each analysis. Varieties with yields highlighted in green indicate that yields were above average across all locations. The percentage of trials in which a variety was the highest yielder, within the top 2, within the top 3, and most importantly, within the statistically highest yielding group are also shown. As mentioned earlier, individual trial results can be obtained from your local county agent and in the variety calculator. Results for OVT will be available soon. Again, growers are also encouraged however to observe multi-location and multi-year data before making variety decisions. Due to the clear variation in performance between trials and years, it is not wise to base variety decisions on results from a single trial or even a small number of trials.

We want to reiterate our appreciation to all of our leadership organizations (NC Cotton Producers Association, NCDA&CS, NC State, Cotton Inc.) and our Seed Companies for their efforts and support in this program for the benefit of all North Carolina cotton growers, as well the diligence and hard work that our county agents, consultants, and cooperating growers put into this program during 2024. We also want to acknowledge and thank TAMA for their generous support of this program as well. This program was a success again in 2024, in its 10th year, due to the efforts of all involved and we look forward to another year of this program in 2025!